When does design become intelligent? (AS OF 8/2/10 - CLOSING COMMENTS ONLY)

Hi, ICDESIGN. I believe you. And, I'm sorry if I offended you too.----- It will only come off as playful to people that aren't the butt of the joke. This is true in any situation in life.----- You may be interested to note that the skull isn’t just one bone. It’s actually several different bones that are fused together. You can see this during fetal development, when the different bones grow, then fuse together as the fetus grows larger.I don’t know if there’s been any work on this, but I think the skeleton likely started as a scattering of little chunks of mineral throughout the body, like the spicules of a sponge, then they gradually became larger over time and fused in different patterns to become the bones we have today.Like Crash explained, the cells can communicate to coordinate their actions. When single-celled organisms first began to coordinate into clusters, it was certainly this sort of signaling ability that allowed the coordination in the first place. By the time different cells were taking on specialized roles, the signaling had surely become more complex to accommodate and facilitate the increased complexity of the inter-cell coordination.So, by the time eyes developed their specialized functions, it is reasonable to suggest that they had a means of signaling in order to coordinate their function with the function of the bone cells, so that they don’t step on each other’s toes.The evidence seems to suggest that the complexity and functionality of this signaling system could be just as easily explained by gradual increases via random mutation and natural selection over time.----- Now you know why there are so many people dedicating their lives to the study of evolution and origins. Learn moderation and self-control, and you'll do fine (I'm still generally failing to learn these things, though, so this is a bit hypocritical). I hope to see you around here again, at least occasionally.

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-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)Darwin loves you.

And iirc there is fossil evidence that points to the gradual formation of what we call our 'jaw' from the first rib of the earliest jawless fishes.

Hi WK, Are you agreeing that DNA contains information?If so does this information control a lot of things?Does the information contained in DNA control what kind of ofspring a creature produces?Does the information contained in DNA control the color of eyes a person has as well as the color of hair?If so how is that information transfered to the cells that produce the eyes and hair?I have been searching for how many proteins can be created by the information in the DNA of humans with no results.I did find one the protein hormone insulin which contains 51 amino acids. Using 51 amino acids there are 1.55 x 10^66 different possible sequences.How do the ribosomes determine what amino acids to put together to create the protein hormone insulin?How do the ribsomes determine what amino acids are to be put together that is required to make all the different proteins a cell needs?As I understand it there are many different proteins that have to work together when DNA replicates.Is the information sent from the DNA by the messenger RNA to the ribsomes?Do the ribsomes have to have the ability to read this information?So my questions above is trying to find out how all these things could happen if no transfer of information occured. Can you point to any information that we can access today that does not have a language and was not created by an intelligent source?Anything I can find on the internet requires an intelligent source. Anything I can find in any library requires an intelligent source.
Anything a computer can process and produce requires an intelligent source.
Anything I buy and use requires an intelligent source.Maybe you have something to offer that I have not contemplated yet.God Bless,

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"John 5:39 (KJS) Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me."

Hi jay, What does a molecule having information in it have to do with you making a identical molecule with different information have to do with information being put into the molecule?As I gather you agree that DNA does contain information.How and where did the original information that is contained in the DNA begin to exist?If you believe it got there by mutation and natural selection please explain how those created information.God Bless,

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"John 5:39 (KJS) Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me."

Nothing in DNA got there by Natural Selection. Everything in DNA got there by chemical reactions.Edited by jar, : appalin spallin

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Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!

Yes, for most definitions of information. Not Werner Gitt's, of course. Modulo mutation and recombination, yes. Yes. It's in the cells. Transcription and translation. By translating the mRNA. Yes. Metaphorically. (They can't read it as I read a newspaper, in the sense of understanding it.) In Shannon's sense, any string of characters contains information, whatever the source, and whether or not it "has a language".If you will admit that DNA contains information, then the sequence of bases in a genome is just such a piece of information.

Nucleotides engage in chemically-specific Watson-Crick base-pairing. Amino acids are "tagged" with transfer-RNA molecules that have exposed bases. Those bases complex specifically with bases on the messenger RNA in a process mediated by the active site of a ribosome.The ribosomes don't determine anything at all, they just make the chemical process more energetically favorable. By chemical reaction. The molecules at work have a structure that promotes certain reactions (the hydrogen bonding of adenine to thyamine or uracil, or of cytosine to guanine) and prohibits certain others (hydrogen bonding of cytosine to adenine, and so on).It's like - why do wheels roll? Not because they "contain information about rolling", but because they're round. The behavior of DNA and its capacity to catalyze the production of specified proteins is a function of its structure and chemistry, not of its "information". We sometimes use ideas about "information" to model and understand the behavior of DNA and of cells, but that notion is in our minds, not in DNA.

For any two given genomes there are an infinite number of sequences of mutations that would get you from one genome to another. Therefore if it is possible for one genome to contain more information than another, then there are an infinite number of sequences of mutations that create information.(If, on the other hand, you wish to define information such that all genomes contain the same amount of information, then the question of creating information is not relevant to genetics.)If you would be more precise about how you're measuring information, then it would be possible for me to be more specific and more brief. But you're a creationist, so I guess you're not going to.

Hi subbie, I thought ICDESIGN gave a good answer to your question as:Your source says: We have an Evolutionary Design Engine run in parallel on a Unix machine with 80 processors.It took a lot of intelligent design to write the program, and build the machine to run it on.BTW the antenna did not evolve by itself out of a bunch of metal.God Bless,

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"John 5:39 (KJS) Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me."

Correct. Did you read far enough to understand how the program worked? If not, try again. Of course it didn't since it's not living.

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Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. Ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them; and no man ever had a distinct idea of the trinity. It is the mere Abracadabra of the mountebanks calling themselves the priests of Jesus. -- Thomas JeffersonFor we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and non-believers. -- Barack ObamaWe see monsters where science shows us windmills. -- PhatIt has always struck me as odd that fundies devote so much time and effort into trying to find a naturalistic explanation for their mythical flood, while looking for magical explanations for things that actually happened. -- Dr. Adequate

ToMAYto, toMAHto. Well ... the ability of a piano roll to make a pianola produce a piece of music is also the result of its structure.If you're going to go down this route I don't quite see what would count as "information".

Hi, ICANT. I would like you to restate this question, if you don’t mind. As it is, it looks like an editing mistake was made somewhere in the middle.The topic of this thread, remember, is how we decide that some observed phenomenon is due to intelligence. So, stay focused on that.You have already agreed that a molecule’s structure and its information content are inseparable.Thus, you must agree that information wasn’t actually put into a molecule. Rather, a molecule was constructed (putatively by a designer), and the information was contained in it.Now, I’m asking you why some molecules look like they were put together by a designer, while some don’t.
Can molecules that were not designed have any information content?
Or can only intelligent design account for molecules that have information?----- Since we both seem to agree that the information is inseparable from the molecule, then we should both also agree that the information began to exist as soon as the molecule existed.You can’t have one without the other. I thought we already established and agreed on this.Edited by Bluejay, : "wasn't be" is bad grammar.

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-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)Darwin loves you.

Well, so, are wheels encoded with information about rolling?Or do they just roll because they're round?I think we should be wary about casually equating "information" with the physical structures that sometimes represent it. Does a Chinese dictionary contain any information in a world where nobody speaks or reads Chinese?Is it information every time one thing represents something else? Is a footprint in the mud information about a foot?I don't know, I'm not saying it's one way or another, but it's certainly possible to look at the function of DNA as one that has nothing to do with information. And then it's possible to look at DNA and see it as nothing but information, meant to be communicated within and between cells.I have a problem with bandying about the word "information" as though everyone's agreed on what it means, I guess. I'm not saying you're wrong.

The requirement for a computer and a computer designer and a computer program and a computer programmer is the precise difference between the simulation and reality, and as such has nothing to tell us about reality. The similarity lies in the fidelity of the simulation to the thing being simulated.The fact that these processes found in nature are (when simulated) sufficient to produce the appearance of design strongly suggests that the real processes being simulated, which do not require a computer nor a program nor a computer designer nor a computer programmer are sufficient to produce the appearance of design.It takes a lot of design and programming to simulate the growth of snowflakes by natural processes. The success of such a program does not suggest that each snowflake is intelligently designed by Jack Frost. It suggests the exact opposite.It takes a lot of design and programming to simulate the origins of the weather by natural processes. The success of such programs does not suggest that storms are caused by thunder-gods. It suggests the exact opposite.It takes a lot of design and programming to simulate the dynamics of the solar system as a result of the laws of motion and gravity. The success of such programs does not suggest that the planets are pushed round by angels. It suggests the exact opposite.It takes a lot of design and programming to simulate anything at all. This is one thing that invariably and inevitably distinguishes a simulation from reality. The success of a program which simulates natural processes and produces a given result shows that these processes are sufficient to produce that result. It does not imply that supernatural processes are required. Instead, it proves the exact opposite.Have you got that? It really is very simple. It was not the antenna that evolved but the specification for it.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

Hi Dr, I thought that the genome was the entirety of an organism's hereditary information and is contained in the DNA except in many types of virus the RNA. I thought my question was very specific.What does how my measuring information have anything to do with the answer.If the genome is all the hereditary information of an organism.My question is, if you believe the information got there by mutation and natural selection to explain how mutation and natural selection created that information?Now if any of this is wrong please correct me.God Bless,

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"John 5:39 (KJS) Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me."