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

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We do know that there is coded information in DNA.

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the word coded is not needed. There is data in the DNA until that data is used to do something - ie it is interpreted. Then it is informtion. That interpreting and usage is done by various biological means and no brain/mind.

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We do know that information comes from a mind.]

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No, in fact that is completely wrong and a rather dishonest attempt to beg the question.Edited by Bikerman, : No reason given.

Hi Dr, But changing any information in computer code will change what a computer program does. If you write the program it will do what you want it to do.You can even create a virus that can alter what a computer program will or will not do.Information is what makes the computer function. It can not function without information input into it.Just as ribsomes can not create the protein needed unless the information in the DNA is delivered.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."

More mistakes I'm afraid.
a) The days of linear algorithmic programming are fading slowly.
No, computers do NOT only do what you tell them to do. Who told Deep Blue how to beat the greatest chess player in the world?
It is routine nowadays to construct neural networks in software. These are not instructions and you do not program them. They 'learn' in a way analogous to the brain - by forming connections and changing the probabilities of the different paths produced through the network.
Nobody has programmed a neural net and nobody COULD program it because exactly how the connections relate to the outputs is often well beyond any human grasp.
Neither could anyone change the net to function in a manner they desired. They would have no clue which pathways to alter unless they effectively lobotomised - which would destroy the functionality.The simple fact is that DNA is replicated with no conscious human involvement, and is then used to construct new cells, still regardless of human thought. What's more it has been doing so for a couple of billion years. To try to apply some redefinition of terms in the hope of avoiding fairly well understood facts is a very dishonest and fallacious way of conducting yourself in debate, I'm afraid.

Hi Ringo, So if we can observe the laws of nature that means some process is being performed by those laws that we can observe.If those laws are performing a process they need to have information to perform those processes.Some entity had to put those laws into effect for them to exist. They can not be a part of the universe as they control the universe. You are getting invented and discovering and understanding mixed up.Facts about the discovery and understanding of DNA.DNA was first isolated, analyzed and recognized as a unique macromolecule by Friedrich Miescher in 1869.In 1919, Phoebus Levene identified the base, sugar and phosphate nucleotide unit in the structure.In 1928, Frederick Griffith performed experiments to prove that DNA carried genetic information.In 1937, William Astbury produced the first X-ray diffraction patterns that proved that DNA had a regular structureOswald Avery along with his co-workers identified DNA as the transforming principle in the year 1943.The role of DNA in heredity was confirmed in 1952, when Alfred Hershey and Martha Chase showed that DNA is the genetic material of the T2 phage.Finally in 1953, James D. Watson and Francis Crick suggested the first accurate model of DNA structure. It was the Meselson-Stahl experiment in1958, which led to the final confirmation of the replication mechanism that was implied by the double-helical structureSeems to me like they discovered DNA and how it did its job.I don't see where any of them invented DNA code.The DNA code was contained in the DNA, not invented as you claim.There was ways invented so man could represent what the genetic code contained in DNA did when transfered by mRNA to the ribsome outside the nucleus of the cell.It has been known since 1928 that DNA contained genetic 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."

Indeed it's called evolution. I suspect your definition is different then mine but I'll agree. I don't know this nor do I see it. The only place a mind is required is to interpret it as information other then that no mind seems to be required. Indeed we observe evolution everyday and know stars form very well by themselves as well as the planets that orbit them and these things are highly complex. If you can show God exists without resorting to the absurdity "Complexity means it was designed" you would get far more then that. So you ignore his question and hope we don't see that you "complexity means it was designed" argument is flawed because for some reason you pick and choose which complex things are designed and which are not.Why does a complex Universe require a designer and a complex god not? Why am I wrong for asking that question? It seems reasonable.

Hi Ringo, I did not know he had a wheel chair that was made of flesh, and bone that was alive. I make no such claim about God resembling us.We are made in the image/likeness of God therefore we resemble Him. The only problem is we are imperfect human beings.

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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."

I'm unaware of your protocols with regard to third party materials. The normal policy is to allow fair use but insist that it is both cited and linked to clearly. So when ICANT copies a chunk from the Buzzle site (link below) is it not required to acknowledge the source and provide a link? Otherwise, surely, people may think that is your own material. Maybe I'm oversensitive and this is how you usually do things...Page not found - Astrology BayEdited by Bikerman, : No reason given.

Hi Biker, How can you make this statement after making this one: Current physics don't know what existed at singularity.We guess it was 100 billion degrees K.Either we know or we don't know.Anything else is a guess or imagination.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."

No. The "laws" have nothing to do with "performing" processes. As I said, a law is just a description of a process, like a newspaper story is a description of an event. The story doesn't create the event and the law doesn't create the process. The event/process takes place without anybody describing it. The laws are not "in effect". They're descriptions of what happens. The entity who created the descriptions is us but that has no effect on the processes that they describe. Actually, you are. You're assuming a priori that certain processes were invented by some entity. But even if such an entity existed and if it did discover how those processes work, there's no indication that the processes themselves are effected in any way by that entity. Yes. That's what I've been saying, that "how DNA does its job" has nothing to do with any spooky entity. Once again, the "code' is a shorthand way of describing the molecule. It has nothing to do with how the molecule "does its job". That depends only on its structure.The code was invented by scientists to describe the molecule so they wouldn't have to draw out every atom every time. The code only describes the information. The information is the molecule itself.

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

Utter nonsense.I suppose you can support that crap?You do know that "Laws" are nothing but human creations describing what nature does don't you?

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

We need to make allowances for Creationist and Intelligent Design advocates or they will have no argument at all.

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

Right. And what we want it to do in this specific application is simulate mindlessness.Are you asserting that programmers have failed in every single attempt to program a computer to simulate mindlessness? Every single one? You're right. In this case, programmers provided the information necessary to simulate mindlessness. Are you asserting, without even inspection of the source code, that they failed? Can you explain how?

The materials are irrelevant. Stephen Hawking has functions - e.g. speech and movement - that are clearly human-designed. He could certianly be the designer of "himself" in that way. Of course you do. The whole design inference is based on the idea that God can design things just like we do. You might as well talk about Intelligent Bus Driving because the earth appears to move through the universe like a bus. You're describing your god in strictly human terms, creating him in your own image, either as a Designer or a Bus Driver.

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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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Current physics don't know what existed at singularity.

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We guess it was 100 billion degrees K.

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No, you may have guessed that, but I have not seen it in the literature. Temperature is a meaningless quantity inside a singularity as far as we know.

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Either we know or we don't know.

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Anything else is a guess or imagination.

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I haven't got the time to show you exactly how wrong you are, because I would need to educate you in so much basic stuff - Hume, the induction problem, semantics and epistemology, Popper, Falsification.. - just for starters - but suffice it to say that there are degrees of certainty with regard to everything known. You may 'know' something and later find it untrue. So we see Christians 'knew' that the earth was 6025 years old. Then it was shown that it was not, so that knowledge never really existed if you demand that knowledge is always true to the highest degree.In fact the word 'truth' is not generally used in science for the same reason that 'proof' is not used - precisely because science uses unambigous terminology and 'truth' is not adequately definable. We have theories which are the best models to explain something. Gravity is such a theory (and a law, to be pedantic). Is it true? Well yes, I think most people would be happy to say it was. Evolution is another theory with about the same degree of certainty as gravity (ie overwhelmingly demonstrated and beyond any sane doubt). There are some differences in detail, of course, but these are as close to 'truth' as a scientist would say existed.So no, we are not 'guessing' and yes any theory can be inadequate but is very rarely wrong. Newton, for example, was correct to all intents and purposes. The problem is that he is only correct for a narrow range of conditions (not very fast). When we exceed those conditions Newton's mechanics fail - slowly at first and faster as the speed increases. Einstein corrected Newton and extended the boundaries within which we know the theory works. The next step will be to bring Einstein's relativity together with quantum theory. There is no contradiction in saying that I know GR is wrong at some level, but it remains remarkably accurate for the rest of possible uses and can be considered 'right'. No guesswork will give you an answer to many decimal places and then prove correct. Relativity does that routinely every day.
Ever used a mobile phone? If relativity was out by more than 1 part in 10 million, your phone would not work.Edited by Bikerman, : to correct a mistype

Hi Ringo, Thoughts about information is not information.It is just thoughts about information.Information exists in books, on cd's, dvd's, records, tapes, hard drives, buildings, in concrete, on all kinds of media, in all kinds of places.But information does not begin to exist unless it begins to exist in the thoughts of a mind. Let me rephrase then.Are you saying there is no genetic information code in DNA?Are you saying that specific information contained in the DNA code does not have to be transfered by some means to the ribsome to instruct the ribsome to create a specific protein? So what determines how those 4 chemicals form into the mRNA that goes outside the nucleus to get the ribsome to create the particular protein required for a specific operation?There are hundreds of thousands of combinations that have to be made. Well no.The information is in the DNA which is in the nucleus.The ribsome is outside the nucleus.They are not in the same place. Why do I get the idea that you think I am the one that says DNA has genetic information code contained in it?I did not discover DNA.It is not my information that DNA contained genetic information code in it.It is not my information that DNA creates mRNA which goes outside the nucleus and the ribsome takes that information and creates protein.That is information from scientist that I have provided source materials for.If you don't want to believe the scientist then you can believe whatever you want to believe.I will not belabor the point further. We were talking about human DNA.The genetic information code in it.I have put forth that information can only be created in the thought process of a mind.Since you know that information has to begin to exist in a mind you jump through hoops trying to explain how the genetic information code contained in DNA is not information but a process.If it is actual information that has to be transcribed and carried to the ribsome to create protein that would require that the information came from a mind.That would require that an eternal intelligent existent being provided the information as no information can arise outside of a mind.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."