Posted on 02/01/2003 9:01:09 PM PST by gore3000
Tuesday, January 28, 2003
By Richard Dawkins
Genes work just like computer software, says this writer - which is why the luddites don't get it, but their children probably will.
IT IS HARD TO EXAGGERATE the sheer intellectual excitement of genetics. What has happened is that genetics has become a branch of information technology. The genetic code is truly digital, in exactly the same sense as computer codes. This is not some vague analogy, it is the literal truth. Moreover, unlike computer codes, the genetic code is universal. Modern computers are built around a number of mutually incompatible machine languages, determined by their processor chips. The genetic code, on the other hand, with a few very minor exceptions, is identical in every living creature on this planet, from sulphur bacteria to giant redwood trees, from mushrooms to men. All living creatures, on this planet at least, are the same make.
The consequences are amazing. It means that a software subroutine (thats exactly what a gene is) can be carried over into another species. This is why the famous antifreeze gene, originally evolved by Antarctic fish, can save a tomato from frost damage. In the same way, a Nasa programmer who wants a neat square-root routine for his rocket guidance system might import one from a financial spreadsheet. A square root is a square root is a square root. A program to compute it will serve as well in a space rocket as in a financial projection.
click here for rest of the article .
(Excerpt) Read more at checkbiotech.org ...
Great point about intelligent design! Regrettably, these folks manage to keep the faithful in line by clouding the facts with continual rewrites of the same old fiction (i.e. Man was transplanted on Earth by an alien race, etc).
For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God's law, indeed it cannot. (Romans 8:7)
Yes, Dawkins's views are indeed scary and remindful of a "Brave New World" (also written by a virulent atheist). His views are indeed quite simplified. The failures of cloning show that genetic manipulation is quite a lot more difficult than his facile statements make them out to be.
I wonder if he would have made these observations had he realized what it truly means. You can write a self-organizing, proliferating program, but it must be made operative. As a software program, the genetic code must also have a bootstrap.
My hypothesis: algorithm at inception is proof of intelligent design.
Yes, the evolutionists coulc not dispute that. Clearly they are trying in many ways to find a way to counter intelligent design. For example they keep talking of evolutionary pathways as if that would solve the complexity problem, they talk about co-evolution of traits (too bad random mutations cannot be reconciled with such an approach), and now they are even talking about 'self programming' as Dawkins does. Clearly all of these are attempts at explaining away the points being made by intelligent design but they are impossible to reconcile with evolutionary theory and change by mutation.
Clearly all of these are attempts at explaining away the points being made by intelligent design but they are impossible to reconcile with evolutionary theory and change by mutation.
Indeed, the theory of evolution requires that the process never be directed and that it have no purpose. But the above article by Richard Dawkins has this to say:
And that presents a problem to the theory of evolution - because the only substantive thing that separates them is the concept of randomness (no order or purpose). And the randomness pillar itself is under siege by the very disciplines lauded by Dawkins: mathematics, physics and information theory.
Marcel-Paul Schützenberger calls it a fatal attraction:
And finally, it is worth observing that the great turbid wave of cybernetics has carried mathematicians from their normal mid-ocean haunts to the far shores of evolutionary biology. There up ahead, Rene Thom and Ilya Prigogine may be observed paddling sedately toward dry land, members of the Santa Fe Institute thrashing in their wake. Stuart Kauffman is among them. An interesting case, a physician half in love with mathematical logic, burdened now and forever by having received a Papal Kiss from Murray Gell-Mann. This ecumenical movement has endeavored to apply the concepts of mathematics to the fundamental problems of evolution -- the interpretation of functional complexity, for example.
The irony is that non of the names raising these issues are from the intelligent design (much less young earth creationist) camps: von Neumann, Yockey, Schützenberger, Patten, Chaitin, Rocha, t'Hooft, Penrose, Wolfram.
The only counter to randomness that evolutionists can offer is determinism ( Science at the crossroad) but that presents this dilemma:
If guided, it may be by deterministic laws or by intelligence.
If it is guided by deterministic laws, then the goalpost has moved (e.g. from biogenesis to big bang to multiverse) - the question will come up again.
Ultimately, one can either choose intelligent designer or anthropic principle or the plenitude argument (everything that can exist, does exist) to resolve the issue to ones own, personal ideology.
Just my two cents
Thank you.
Questions beyond knowing for certain, are to be with us always.
Intelligence or lack thereof is not correlated to being naturally blonde but lack of intelligence is correlated to being a bleached blonde.
I see our discussion about 'the radndomness pillar' didn't affect your view in any way. Oh, well. What was it you said? "prejudice and ideology"? Yep, you are right.
Regards,
Lev
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