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

Yes it is. That has been demonstrated to you many times in this very thread. Information is contained in any arrangement of molecules or letters.You're confusing "information" with "message". There is no message required in the chemistry of DNA. The only information is the structure, which allows certain reactions to take place. And please don't bring up "messenger RNA". That's an unfortunate term which will only confuse those who are ignorant of chemistry. It's still just a molecule.

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Life is like a Hot Wheels car. Sometimes it goes behind the couch and you can't find it.

Hi jay, What does how a computer or computer program working have to do with whether I am a Theist, Deist, Atheist, or Agnostic?I believe in an intelligent designer that created this universe and provided all the information for it and everything in it to exist at the intelligent designers will.When the intelligent designer decides to end the existence of this universe it will.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."

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I did find the random mutation generator avida 2.8.1 which is used or misused at the discrecion of the operator as there is a command line that parameters can be changed. So much for random if you can change the way the program runs. It does what you want it to do.

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You do know, I presume, that any number generated by software is pseudo-random, since they are algorithmic in origin?
That is one reason why software random number generators have parameters that the user can alter - to make the series more appropriate for the type of random being used (ie random selection from a long list? Random pairing? Random dependant variables...and so on).
The objection that an operator being able to intervene in a process means the process is determined by the operator is simply wrong. The operator is unlikely to be able to determine the outcome of any change - and in the case of an evolutionary algorithm it is certain that they cannot.Edited by Bikerman, : No reason given.

Now, if only you could find one single particular thing wrong with it, you wouldn't have to resort to this crude blustering rhetoric. No. Just as choosing between a six-sided and an eight-sided dice does not mean that the dice will do what you want them to do, nor prevent the results from being random.Is there anything at all you can't misunderstand? And is it really necessary to misunderstand everything that's explained to you to in order to defend creationism? I should think that you could be a creationist based on far fewer mistakes than you feel the need to make.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

But it simply isn't a mechanism.If I ask for the mechanism that by which a camera works, it is not a reply to say "a photographer points it at something and presses this button". Heaven doesn't exist; the Earth was formed by gravity. What about the information in DNA, which we know to have been created by evolution?Sauce for the goose ... Assertion is not argument. This would include God, yes?Does it also include everything that ever has existed? No. Scientists admit a limit to their knowledge of cosmology. False dichotomy. Toronto. It is a little-known fact that the laws of nature are Canadian.Would you like to rephrase your question so that it makes more sense? Oh, look, the little-seen false trichotomy.I do not propose any nonsense.

Not a record, I'm afraid. A certain creationist poster in another forum once presented me with a false six choice menu (sexotomy?).PS - it is also worth pointing out that chaos is probably not what you rhink it means ICANT. Chaos is deterministic (ie NOT random).

Hi Ringo, You are confusing an intelligent designer of the universe with an entity that is a part of the universe which the intelligent designer would not be a part of the universe.Since the intellligent designer designed the processes you are talking about why would he have to rearrange existing processes to achieve a designed result?If I pull up my Chief Architect program and design cabinets for a kitchen. I can design and arrange these cabinets in any shape or form I desire. I usually go for useability. Once these plans are complete they can go to the cabinet shop where all the materials are gathered and processed into the cabinets as designed. Then the cabinets must be installed in their proper place according to the original plan for them to be functional.Now all I have done is produce information in the form of a design and blueprint for the kitchen. Which if not followed will not produce the kitchen I designed.The information I have produced is taken and applied through many processes to known materials and the end product is a functional kitchen.So yes I am limited to using the materials available and rearranging them into a picture that is in my mind that is translated into a blueprint for the shop to follow.But the designer of the universe did not have any limitations as there was nothing in existence in the form we see it. He had to take energy and create everything that exists out of that energy. (If I am not mistaken science tells us that everything we see came from energy of a form we do not comprehend) The intelligent designer not only created the materials He also put them together in the form we see them today.An intelligent designer can not be a part of his/her creation.A doctor cannot perform open heart surgery on the patient if he is the patient being operated on.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."

That's true. That mind is the human mind.The "laws" of nature are simply descriptions of what we observe. They don't govern what happens, they're just codifications of what happens. We humans use the laws of nature as a kind of shorthand code, much like the DNA code, which we also invented, to refer to processes which are too complex to refer to in longhand every time we mention them.

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Life is like a Hot Wheels car. Sometimes it goes behind the couch and you can't find it.

Not at all. I'm saying that there is no evidence that any designer can create new processes. You're postulating an entity that doesn't resemble a designer at all. Nonsense. Stephen Hawking could certainly be the intelligent designer of the system (wheelchair/computer,etc.) that helps him function in the world.The only intelligent designer that we know of is us. Your claim that your god somehow resembles us isn't necessarily very complementary to him. You should be proclaiming from the rooftops that your god is NOT a designer in any way.

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Life is like a Hot Wheels car. Sometimes it goes behind the couch and you can't find it.

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(If I am not mistaken science tells us that everything we see came from energy of a form we do not comprehend)

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You ARE mistaken. We understand the primal state pretty well. The current models can take us to 10^-30 seconds after BB (t=0).
Current physics won't be able to go much further because GR doesn't really 'get' singularities - we need a quantum solution for the singularity and until we can force GR and QED/QCD into a shotgun marriage then that will not happen. There are some promising developments in Loop Quantum Gravity theory that might help, but I suspect we are still a few years away from any coherent and evidentially supported theory of singularities.Anyhoo...after the initial bang (which wasn't a bang at all) we understand the energies involved pretty well - the models hold up and predict pretty well many of the features we see - the abundance of light elements, the age of the recombination of particles into atoms, the age of the first stars and, crucially, the termperature of the cosmic microwave background.So, in short, don't try to play the 'science has no clue' card because:
a) Many people here probably know far more science than you, so they will spot any dishonesty
b) Scientists are the first to admit what they do and do not know and they are always very conservative.
c) Ignorance of one part of a model does not imply general ignorance or a bad model.

Can I play the same game as you?Where did the intelligent designer's "blue print" come from? Who assembled it? Saying God has always existed does not answer my question. I am using your logic. You claim complexity and "programming" is proof of a designer and that it's the only way for complex systems to be complex then your god MUST be designed.You cannot have it both ways. If you say that God was not "Intelligently designed" then you MUST concede that complex systems do not require a designer.I don't understand how you can justify this in your mind. Edited by DC85, : No reason given.

Hi Ringo, You have told me several times that information is contained in any arrangements of molecules or letters.It has not been demonstrated. There is quite a difference in the two.Information is thoughts.Those thoughts are expressed in arrangements of molecules or letters. On a computer they are represented by 1's and 0's. That is your problem not mine.Information which is the thoughts of a mind is delivered in the message.You are saying the information and the message are the same and in DNA they are only chemical processes.The problem with that is there are hundreds of thousands of different proteins that are required for the cell to do its job. The blueprint for those proteins are contained in the DNA code which has to be delivered to the ribsome for the production of those proteins.That requires that somewhere, somehow, someway, that four chemical bases: adenine (A), guanine (G), cytosine (C), and thymine (T). be arranged from the code stored in the DNA for a specific protein and delivered so the ribsome can make the specific protein specified of hundreds of thousand proteins. I did not say there was.I did say the code information stored in the DNA for a specific protein had to be transfered to the ribsome which is outside the cell nucleus for the ribsome to make the protein requested.The ribsome has to have the information stored in the DNA to create the protein the DNA needs for the hundreds of thousand different jobs that have to be performed.Unless that information is received the ribsome will not make the protein. If you have a source that states such please present it.My definition of information.Using the dictionary definition (computer science case in particular) will suffice: "Processed, stored or transmitted data."How do you make that into a structure? mRNA is produced by the DNA with a specific message for the ribsome that is outside the nucleus as an order for a specific protein. The ribsome takes that message and creates the protein required by the DNA.So as far as you may be concerned it is an unfortunate term. But it is part of the process that is coded into the DNA information that must take place.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."

It has been demonstrated. Your refusal to understand doesn't nullify the demonstration. No it isn't. Thoughts can be about information but information exists in arrangements independently of any thoughts. No. I'm saying there is no "message" in DNA chemistry. There is no "blueprint". There is only the structure of the molecule which allows it to undergo certain reactions to produce certain results. You have never shown how any of that is not a mechanical process. And you keep ignoring the fact that that information is right there in the structure of the molecule. It can't fail to be received. It's already there. How do you make that into anything else? You have molecules - e.g. DNA or hydrogen or oxygen. They have a certain structure, which allows them to do certain reactions which have certain results. What do you need besides that?Where's the "blueprint" in hydrogen or oxygen which tells it how to form water? The only blueprint or inforamtion or message is the structure which allows them to form water.H-H + O-O + H-H --> H-O-H + H-O-HEvery other chemical reaction works the same way, including the reactions of DNA. The only difference is that DNA is too big to diagram like that, so we use a shorthand "code" to depict it. You're misunderstanding the code as part of the reaction when it's only a description of the molecule.

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Life is like a Hot Wheels car. Sometimes it goes behind the couch and you can't find it.

LOL...so now we have creationist trick 26 from the book of lies.
Information is now redefined to mean human thoughts.
I suppose, since my masters is in Information Processing that I should expect people to defer to my knowledge on this, but academic nicities are not mandatory so here is what information is in common understanding.
It is [b]data (facts, figures, text, sound, visual images) which has been organised in some way (normally via some sort of processing) to give it context and meaning.
No mention of the human brain you will notice, because I understand that meaning does not necessarily imply human thought. Certainly the higher primates are capable of understanding concepts from visual clues and I would argue that all animal life forms attach meaning to certain sensory stimulii and can, thus, both use and produce information, with no human in sight.Can we say that machines use information? They produce it for us all the time but in a limited sense they also use it. Binary coded instructions can be said to be 'information' to a computer because the computer can translate the symbols into distinct and repeatable actions. A set of such instructions is what we call a program, in this case in the lowest level language - machine code.Can information exist in a universe without consciousness? More difficult since we would not be able to apply the word 'meaning' or 'inform' very easily, but wait...
surely any process which can be instructed in a consistent and repeatable manner is making use of information? Yes indeed, so in a very real sense the DNA in the human cell is processed (transcribed) onto RNA copies which are the information needed to build proteins in the correct sequence and type. The fact that it has meaning and informs the cell components is demonstrated by the fact that when the information is misread or mistranscribed the results are different (and nearly always worse).So I'm afraid your redefinition of the word information does not hold and is thrown out.PS - your dictionary definition stinks. 3/10 Transmitting data gives data. Processing and contextualising are the key operations and information must inform, else it remains data.Edited by Bikerman, : No reason given.Edited by Bikerman, : To correct a fact I had missed

Hi Dr, Could you present proof or even an argument that any information can be created by any natural method?We do know that there is coded information in DNA.We do know that information comes from a mind.We have no proof that information can be created by natural means.If you do now would be a time to present it and then you could claim your Nobel. Can you see God?It includes everything that has existed since the beginning or will ever begin to exist that you or any man can see. I did not mention scientist. I said both sides and pointed to a thread for you to check to prove my point. What is false about the three options I gave.Just telling me that they are not the only options without presenting any other option will not educate me or anyone else. So you don't have a clue. You also don't propose anything that makes sense as an answer to the question either.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."