Codes, Evolution, and Intelligent Design

I agree. It's tdcanam who is arguing from a communications standpoint. DNA is an encoding of information.An encoding of information is one fairly clear level of abstraction for thinking about DNA. I think the mRNA and ribosomes and so forth are suitable analogs for communication channels. And I think both proteins (produced as part of cell metabolism) and more DNA (produced during reproduction) can be viewed as reencodings of the information in the original DNA. Of course, the new DNA is just a reencoded copy, usually an imperfect one, of the original DNA.And I agree, and I think Modulous does, too, that DNA bears a strong resemblance to the way people tend to encode information, which is as a sequence of symbols. The GACT nucleotide sequences of DNA when grouped into subsequences of 3 to encode for amino acids and into genes to encode for proteins are strong analogs for letters, words and sentences.But the intent and purpose that tdcanam and other IDists think they see is merely an anthropomorphic projection, and people tend to do this for anything. The intent represented by sunlight is to help plants grow, the intent represented by the moon is to provide light at night and divide the year into months, and the intent represented by DNA is to make proteins and act as the store of heredity. Tdcanam would scoff at the first two, but these are all examples of the same thing, projecting human qualities onto nature.--Percy

The question was rhetorical. It makes no sense to wait for the theory of evolution to become fact because no theory ever becomes fact. If your criteria for accepting any theory is whether or not it is a fact, then no theory will ever be acceptable to you. Theories are never proven. All scientific theories are always held tentatively, accepted only until modified or superceded. Theories are proposed in order to explain observations (facts). They can be thought of as a generalization from the facts, and ususally the generalization includes implications that makes predictions about things not currently known. Successful predictions increase our confidence in a theory.Theories must also be capable of falsification. In other words, it must be provisionally possible to find evidence that invalidates the theory. Any framework of understanding built around a body of facts that is not both tentative and falsifiable cannot be considered a scientific theory.Using the correct definition of theory, we can see that the theory of evolution is a successful theory that has proven itself through correct predictions many times (discovery that there is actually a mechanism of heredity is probably the most significant), and which has never been falsified, such as by the discovery of human and dinosaur remains in the same layer. Maybe not. Depends upon what you were really trying to say.--Percy

Well, geez, Jon, what part of "We've been using the word 'code' in a very sloppy way" didn't you understand? The very message you're responding to was a suggestion to move away from the sloppy usage and toward a more precise one.As I explained in Message 177, we often use the word "code" in an imprecise manner, calling DNA a code or calling a sequence of letters like "qeud fjdl jejc wpqx" a code. But to be precise, they're not codes. They're actually encoded information. Codes are sets of rules for transforming encoded information from one form to another.To be yet even more clear, here's an example. The message I want to send is "Come home now." This message is encoded information. I want to transform this message to different encoding, let us say "Dpnf ipnf opx". That, too, is encoded information. Neither "Come home now" nor "Dpnf ipnf opx" is a code.The code itself is actually a set of transformations, and for this example is most easily represented by a table:

• A => B
• B => C
• C => D
• ...
• Z => A

The above is the encoding table. In order to decode the information into it's original form we need a complementary decoding table:

• A => Z
• B => A
• C => B
• ...
• Z => Y

Clear?--Percy

I haven't said anything that contradicts the Wikipedia definition, and the definition isn't implying what you're claiming. It didn't say that codes apply to communications, though of course they do, but if they had said it that way it would imply that codes don't apply outside the field of communications.But Wikipedia didn't say it that way. It gave the definition of code used by the communications field, a person driven endeavor. But the definition of code use by the field of communications is valid in contexts having nothing to do with people. Nucleotides aren't proteins, but they *are* funny shaped chemicals, this is from the Wikipedia definition of nucleotide: And yes, we gave the DNA nucleotides the letter names GACT, but those are just names, not definitions. We give names to everything, and the nature of those things doesn't change when we give them names. Different languages give different names for the same thing, and it all comes down to Shakespeare ("A rose by any other name...").By the way, if you follow that link to the nucleotide definition you'll see that one of the roles of DNA is in signaling. Gee, sounds like communications! You know that rule you gave just before you said, "There is no code in DNA"? The one about one funny shaped letter yielding another funny shaped letter? As in the rules I gave before like "A => T"? That's the definition of a code. A code is a set of rules for transforming encoded information from one form (GACT) to another (CTGA in this case). Of course, in the table we put our names for these nucleotides, but the names are just stand-ins for the actual nucleotides.--Percy

To be precise, DNA is not a code but encoded information. But how often is it necessary to be precise? In most discussions you can call DNA a code and it won't matter that this isn't quite correct. In other words, just as you implied, in many contexts the difference isn't important.But in this discussion I think more precision is necessary.--Percy

It is tdcanam who is arguing that codes must be the product of a conscious mind. But what he's calling codes are actually encoded information. Phrased properly, he's claiming that encoded information can only be produced by a conscious mind. This is obviously incorrect, as the numerous examples provided in this thread have shown.--Percy

Wounded King was correct to make the association with sorting algorithms, which maybe he'll explain in detail, so I'll just say that a sorting algorithm is a sequence of rules to follow to sort collections of objects (interpret the word "object" liberally) into order according to some criteria of comparison.The point I'll make is that I can't find a perspective by which to view any of the processes related to DNA as a type of sorting algorithm, so I'm afraid this analogy doesn't work for me. I had better luck making sense of what you said next: This is actually Quetzal's point, that it's just chemistry. My reply (already provided somewhere earlier in this thread) was that he is absolutely right, at one level of abstraction it is just chemistry. But the chemical perspective is not the only level of abstraction. As I said to Quetzal, the fact that music is just notes in no way invalidates higher levels of abstraction like measures, phrases, themes and symphonies. Even notes are just abstractions, since notes can be deconstructed into vibrational frequencies, just as Quetzal's chemistry can be deconstructed into atomic level interactions.One of the moderators pointed out that "Percy" is not a subtopic of this thread, so I've changed the subtopic from "Re: Percy" to "Levels of Abstraction".--Percy

This is a code. In fact, the analogy to keys that you use is apt, since keys are a type of mechanical code. You don't seem to realize that you're describing things that fit the definition of code to a T, then concluding, "Not a code." Math *is* a code. In fact, most of the the encoding operations used in digital design, like hamming codes and so forth, are mathematical transformations. Remember the definition of a code, a set of rules to transform encoded information from one form to another. Mathematics is one of the most obvious ways for specifying such transformations. Of course it's not a code. A code is a set of transformation rules.I am content if you reject that DNA is encoded information that can be decoded by a set of transformation rules. I'm much more interested in tdcanam's position that codes can only be created by a conscious intelligence.--Percy