The genetic code cannot arise through natural selection

The genetic code cannot arise through natural selection

https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t1405-the-genetic-code-cannot-arise-through-natural-selection

Guenther Witzany Communication as the Main Characteristic of Life
The biocommunication approach has to integrate coherent natural genome editing of the genetic code of living organisms. In this perspective, the genetic code of living organisms cannot be the result of chance mutations (error-replication events) that are biologically selected. The error-replication narrative has serious problems to explain the sudden emergence of new species, new phenotypic traits, and genome innovations as a sudden single event
https://philpapers.org/archive/WITCAT-3.pdf

A.C. McINTOSH Information And Entropy – Top-down Or Bottom-up Development In Living Systems? No. 4 (2009)
This paper deals with the fundamental and challenging question of the ultimate origin of genetic information from a thermodynamic perspective. The theory of evolution postulates that random mutations and natural selection can increase genetic information over successive generations. It is often argued from an evolutionary perspective that this does not violate the second law of thermodynamics because it is proposed that the entropy of a non-isolated system could reduce due to energy input from an outside source, especially the sun when considering the earth as a biotic system. By this, it is proposed that a particular system can become organized at the expense of an increase in entropy elsewhere. However, whilst this argument works for structures such as snowflakes that are formed by natural forces, it does not work for genetic information because the information system is composed of machinery which requires precise and non-spontaneous raised free energy levels – and crystals like snowflakes have zero free energy as the phase transition occurs. The functional machinery of biological systems such as DNA, RNA and proteins require that precise, non-spontaneous raised free energies be formed in the molecular bonds which are maintained in a far from equilibrium state. Furthermore, biological structures contain coded instructions which, as is shown in this paper, are not defined by the matter and energy of the molecules carrying this information. Thus, the specified complexity cannot be created by natural forces even in conditions far from equilibrium. The genetic information needed to code for complex structures like proteins actually requires information which organizes the natural forces surrounding it and not the other way around – the information is crucially not defined by the material on which it sits. The information system locally requires the free energies of the molecular machinery to be raised in order for the information to be stored. Consequently, the fundamental laws of thermodynamics show that entropy reduction which can occur naturally in non-isolated systems is not a sufficient argument to explain the origin of either biological machinery or genetic information that is inextricably intertwined with it. This paper highlights the distinctive and non-material nature of information and its relationship with matter, energy and natural forces. It is proposed in conclusion that it is the non-material information (transcendent to the matter and energy) that is actually itself constraining the local thermodynamics to be in ordered disequilibrium and with specified raised free energy levels necessary for the molecular and cellular machinery to operate.
https://www.witpress.com/elibrary/dne-volumes/4/4/420

Perry Marshall: 
Natural Selection can only decrease information, since it causes things to die. (Which is subtraction of information.) And random mutation is noise, and noise destroys (because of information entropy). So you have two subtractions and zero additions of information with Neo-Darwinism.
Every single genetic algorithm that exists requires pre-programmed goals in order to work. None operate from pure randomness and undirected selection. They ALWAYS sneak in some form of design. Always.
Have you ever noticed that the software on your computer never gets better by itself?
Have you ever noticed that no software in history has ever gotten better by itself?
Nothing evolves before being programmed to do so.
Thus evolution itself makes the strongest case yet of a Grand Design.

George L.G. Miklos (1993)
Natural selection tells us absolutely nothing about underlying mechanisms of genomic changes, or their consequences on developmental changes which lead to evolutionary innovations. In short, it is silent about the emergence of complex forms.

Bernd-Olaf Küppers, Information and the Origin of Life  1990) 170-72
The RNA world hypothesis has not solved the problem of the origin of life or the origin of biological information. The "direct templating" model of the origin of the genetic code fails to explain both the origin of the code and the origin of sequence-specific genetic information.
https://3lib.net/book/604676/155383

The Computer Revolution Did Not Show That Information Could Be Produced From Nothing January 30, 2021
Paul Davies How did stupid atoms spontaneously write their own software … ? Nobody knows …… there is no known law of physics able to create information from nothing.
https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/the-computer-revolution-did-not-show-that-information-could-be-produced-from-nothing/

DNA- how did it originate?
Brian Bergeron: saying that triplet codon sequences come about by spontaneous chemical reactions is false, as they have only been shown to come about through the processes which already exists in the cell. To say that the genetic code came about because of the chemical properties of these particular molecules is also false and shows a basic lack of an understanding of chemistry. You cannot attribute the functional language of the genetic code to chemistry and more then you could attribute the properties of ink and paper to the meaningful sentences on a page or the properties of electrons and switches to the rise of function binary code. It's just plain silly to suggest otherwise. Another compelling evidence of God is the complex blueprint contained in the DNA of life as simple as a single-celled organism. Those biological instructions, blueprints for proteins and functional cell organization, cannot be attributed to random molecular collisions. DNA, the basis of all organic life, is an instruction set. It is the common denominator of all of living beings on earth. How did this enormously complex information come to be, for even the most primitive single-celled organisms?

A Response to Dr. Dawkins’ “Information Challenge”
Casey Luskin Evolution News & Views ,October 4, 2007 
In September, 2007, I posted a link to a YouTube video where Richard Dawkins was asked to explain the origin of genetic information, according to Darwinism. I also posted a link to Dawkins' rebuttal to the video, where he purports to explain the origin of genetic information according to Darwinian evolution. The question posed to Dawkins was, "Can you give an example of a genetic mutation or evolutionary process that can be seen to increase the information in the genome?" Dawkins famously commented that the question was "the kind of question only a creationist would ask . . ." Dawkins writes, "In my anger I refused to discuss the question further, and told them to stop the camera." Dawkins' highly emotional response calls into question whether he is capable of addressing this issue objectively. This will be a response assessing Dawkins' answer to "The Information Challenge."

D.L. Abel Chance and necessity do not explain the origin of life 24 June 2004
Selection pressure cannot select nucleotides at the digital programming level where primary structures form. Genomes predetermine the phenotypes which natural selection only secondarily favors. Contentions that offer nothing more than long periods of time offer no mechanism of explanation for the derivation of genetic programming. No new information is provided by such tautologies. The argument simply says it happened. As such, it is nothing more than blind belief. Science must provide rational theoretical mechanism, empirical support, prediction fulfillment, or some combination of these three. If none of these three are available, science should reconsider that molecular evolution of genetic cybernetics is a proven fact and press forward with new research approaches which are not obvious at this time. 5
https://sci-hub.ren/10.1016/j.cellbi.2004.06.006

Harold R. Booher, Ph.D. The Scientific Case for Intelligent Design February 2010
The probability of useful DNA, RNA, or proteins occurring by chance is extremely small. Calculations vary somewhat but all are extremely small (highly improbable). If one is to assume a hypothetical prebiotic soup to start there are at least three combinational hurdles (requirements) to overcome. Each of these requirements decreases the chance of forming a workable protein. First, all amino acids must form a chemical bond (peptide bond) when joining with other amino acids in the protein chain. Assuming, for example a short protein molecule of 150 amino acids, the probability of building a 150 amino acids chain in which all linkages are peptide linkages would be roughly 1 chance in 10^45. The second requirement is that functioning proteins tolerate only left-handed amino acids, yet in abiotic amino acid production, the right-handed and left-handed isomers are produced in nearly the same frequency. The probability of building a 150-amino-acid chain at random in which all bonds are peptide bonds and all amino acids are L-form is roughly 1 chance in 10^90. The third requirement for functioning proteins is that the amino acids must link up like letters in a meaningful sentence, i.e. in a functionally specified sequential arrangement. The chance for this happening at random for a 150 amino acid chain is approximately 1 chance in 10^195. It would appear impossible for chance to build even one functional protein considering how small the likelihood is. By way of comparison to get a feeling of just how low this probability is considered that there are only 10^65 atoms in our galaxy.. 6

Signal to Noise: A Critical Analysis of Active Information April 23, 2015
For, under such "infinite monkey" circumstances, searches based on random walks from arbitrary initial configurations will be maximally unlikely to find such isolated islands of function. As the crowd-sourced Wikipedia summarises (in testimony against its ideological interest compelled by the known facts): The text of Hamlet contains approximately 130,000 letters. Thus there is a probability of one in 3.4 × 10^183,946 to get the text right at the first trial. The average number of letters that needs to be typed until the text appears is also 3.4 × 10^183,946, or including punctuation, 4.4 × 10^360,783.  Even if the observable universe were filled with monkeys typing from now until the heat death of the universe, their total probability to produce a single instance of Hamlet would still be less than one in 10^183,800. As Kittel and Kroemer put it, “The probability of Hamlet is therefore zero in any operational sense of an event…”, and the statement that the monkeys must eventually succeed “gives a misleading conclusion about very, very large numbers.” This is from their textbook on thermodynamics, the field whose statistical foundations motivated the first known expositions of typing monkeys. 
https://uncommondescent.com/evolution/signal-to-noise-a-critical-analysis-of-active-information/

Bernard Feltz  Self-organization and Emergence in Life Sciences, , page 36 
The sequence on a string of DNA is not determined by the laws that govern the physical and chemical properties of DNA. If it was so, the string could not contain any information (Polanyi  1968). For DNA to work as carrier of genetic information, it was necessary that this molecule acquire the capability to change its sequence arbitrarily. It is only statistically that DNA contains A, T, G, C in equal proportion. In this respect, DNA is unique among molecules to conserve its physico-chemical properties when its sequence changes. In other words, the genetic information is irreducible to the physico-chemistry of DNA. Strings of DNA can function as symbols, which can be used by Nature (and interpreted by us) without any further regard for its physical or chemical basis. It may be true that quantum mechanics could, in principle, be used to derive many properties of the DNA molecules (molecular weight, denaturation temperature...). In that sense, reduction would have been achieved. However, there is nothing from chemistry or physics that can be used to derive the function of DNA. This function is irreducible. 

Similarly, Darwinism is independent of string theory. It is unlikely that any further discovery in particle Physics will make biologists change their mind about evolutionary theory (as Weinberg 1993 admits). Returning to the analogy with the Game of Life, one could imagine that new laws are discovered that would explain the transition rule as deducible from a lower level. This would not change our way to understand the dynamics of LIFE at higher levels. For a biologist, the only thing required from the physical world is to allow life. If one think of life as a class of systems (as opposed as a unique, local phenomenon; see Langton), then several physical universes would be compatible with life. Basically, these universes should allow natural selection to work, and many universes could do that. Hence, knowing more about particle physics will not help to understand more about biology (or meteorology, for that matter). 

Living systems are underdetermined by physical laws. The problem is not that Physics might still be incomplete (nor that Biology might be incomplete, however unlikely). Let’s now look at another problem with the alleged reduction of Biology to Physics: the fact that Biologists have described laws that do not belong to Physics (but which are, of course, compatible with it). At the heart of Biology lies the theory of evolution by natural selection, and natural selection can be seen as a universal law (Reed 1981; Dawkins 1983; Bauchau 1993). It states that a trait distribution will inevitably change from generation to generation whenever the following conditions are met: the trait affects reproduction rate, is (at least partly) heritable, and varies among individuals. Besides species, this law also applies to RNA molecules in vitro or to computer programs. Natural selection is both a fundamental law (as fundamental, at least for living organisms, as the standard model of particles) and a law unknown to Physics. It is probably the best example and a very important one, considering the central position of natural selection in Biology, but other potential laws could be listed, although their status is less well established. The existence of these autonomous laws is a consequence of (and evidence for) the irreducibility of living processes to physical laws.
https://3lib.net/book/841583/5f028b

All living cells that we know of on this planet are DNA software-driven biological machines comprised of hundreds of thousands of protein robots, coded for by the DNA, that carry out precise functions." - Craig Ventner, PhD, University of California 2
Before self-replication, natural selection by definition does not exist 3
We wish Lonsdale and his researchers luck. They will need it. There can be no natural selection without reproduction, the teams all realize. "If life started as RNA world, somewhere, somehow, the molecules making up RNA had to be reproduced." So if natural selection is out, what remains? 4

1. http://www.discovery.org/a/2177
2. http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,2119636,00.html 
3. http://www.lifesorigin.com/chap5/meteorites-2.php
4. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2012/06/millions_to_cha_1061231.html
5. https://www.academia.edu/1204161/Trevors_J.T._Abel_D.L._2004_Chance_and_necessity_do_not_explain_the_origin_of_life_Cell_Biology_International_28_729-739
6. http://www.arn.org/docs/booher/scientific-case-for-ID.html
7. https://uncommondescent.com/evolution/signal-to-noise-a-critical-analysis-of-active-information/
8. http://c.ymcdn.com/sites/network.asa3.org/resource/dynamic/forums/20130306_234609_22078.pdf

More links:
good debate on DNA as information
http://www.cosmicfingerprints.com/dna-atheists/  
Genetic code optimisation
http://creation.com/genetic-code-optimisation-1
Mind over matter
https://creation.com/mind-over-matter

https://youtu.be/lz1uBhFvTQc


DNA is information, like software code - information comes only from intelligence. Even the lowest form of life, a single-celled organism, is guided by the enormously complex information in DNA.

https://youtu.be/00vBqYDBW5s?t=20m43s

Materialism Cannot Explain the Origin of the Genetic Code. Intelligent Design is a More Reasonable Explanation 1

Materialism cannot explain the origin of the genetic code. The probability that the necessary chemical reactions could occur through the unguided working of physical laws is too low. No one who has investigated the problem believes there is a satisfactory explanation of how life or the genetic code could arise through natural means. For the genetic code to work, there has to be a semiotic system to use DNA or RNA to represent the sequence of amino acids in each protein and there has to be a cybernetic system to produce the machinery that uses the genetic code to produce proteins. This requires: The development of the code whereby each possible triplet of nucleotides represents an amino acid. The determination of the sequence of amino acids for each protein that is to be produced. The creation of the specific genes (molecules of DNA or maybe RNA) that use the triplet code to specify the proteins. The many tRNAs, one for each triplet, and the amino acids and enzymes that combine amino acids and tRNA.

Ribosomes.
All of this has to come into existence at the same time because:

The parts are not useful individually. But paradoxically, according to materialism these parts are the information and machinery that is needed to produce itself. Furthermore, the genetic code is finely tuned to reduce the effects of point mutations and there is no explanation as to how the genetic code could evolve from something simpler, something less finely tuned. Any change in the genetic code would be catastrophic because it would effect every gene. It would be like changing every letter "n" to the letter "p" in an entire book. It would create so many "misspellings" for an organism that it is impossible that it could survive. Evolving from a double code to a triplet code would require simultaneous changes in every codon in every gene and in all the tRNAs and the mechanism that moves the mRNA with respect to the ribosome during protein synthesis. All these parts have to be produced in the correct numbers and arranged in a configuration where they will work together. These factors all contribute to the impossibly low probability of the genetic code arising through the unguided action of natural forces, chance, self assembly, and/or evolution. However, we know there is a phenomenon that can create semiotic and cybernetic systems that would otherwise have no chance of arising through natural processes. This phenomenon is intelligence. Therefore it is reasonable to suppose that the genetic code was created by an intelligence. This is not a "god of the gaps" argument. It is the same mode of logic, "like phenomena have like causes"8, whereby the measurement of gravity on earth leads to the conclusion that gravity causes the planets to orbit the sun. It is the same mode of logic used by many early naturalists, such as geologist Charles Lyell, to explain phenomena that occurred in the remote past by identifying causes known to be effective in the present time. Additionally, you don't need evidence of who the intelligence was to make this supposition. If a NASA space craft found machinery on Mars, we would not think that the machinery arose naturally just because there were no Martians around who could have made it. The existence of machinery that could not arise naturally is sufficient to conclude the existence of an intelligent maker.

However, the belief that naturalism can explain something that current science says is impossible is a "god of the gaps" argument. Our current understanding of chemistry and the conditions on the early earth says there is no good natural explanation for the origin of life and the genetic code.1 To disregard science and maintain faith in naturalism is a "god of the gaps" argument. To paraphrase the Nobel prize winning neurophysiologist Sir John Eccles: Promissory materialism is superstition.

Dr. Kofahl, a chemist, observes:

   ‘A good example of alleged molecular homology is afforded by the a- and b-hemoglobin molecules of land vertebrates including man.  These supposedly are homologous with an ancestral myoglobin molecule similar to human myoglobin.  Two a- and two b-hemoglobin associate together to form the marvellous human hemoglobin molecule that carries oxygen and carbon dioxide in our blood.  But myoglobin acts as single molecules to transport oxygen in our muscles.  Supposedly, the ancient original myoglobin molecules slowly evolved along two paths until the precisely designed a- and b-hemoglobin molecules resulted that function only when linked together in groups of four to work in the blood in a much different way under very different conditions from myoglobin in the muscle cells.  What we have today in modern myoglobin and hemoglobin molecules are marvels of perfect designs for special, highly demanding tasks.  Is there any evidence that intermediate, half-evolved molecules could have served useful functions during this imaginary evolutionary change process, or that any creature could survive with them in its blood?  There is no such information.  Modern vertebrates can tolerate very little variation in these molecules.  Thus, the supposed evolutionary history of the allegedly homologous globin molecules is a fantasy, not science.’ 2

1. http://ncu9nc.blogspot.com.br/2013/04/materialism-cannot-explain-origin-of.html
2. http://www.trueorigin.org/dawkinfo.asp

Unguided Chemical Processes Cannot Explain the Origin of the Genetic Code
Let's assume that a primordial sea filled with life's building blocks did exist on the early Earth, and somehow it formed proteins and other complex organic molecules. Theorists believe that the next step in the origin of life is that -- entirely by chance -- more and more complex molecules formed until some began to self-replicate. From there, they believe Darwinian natural selection took over, favoring those molecules that were better able to make copies of themselves. Eventually, they assume, it was inevitable that these molecules would evolve complex machinery -- like that used in today's genetic code -- to survive and reproduce.
Have modern origin-of-life theorists explained how this crucial bridge from inert nonliving chemicals to self-replicating molecular systems took place? The most prominent hypothesis for the origin of the first life is called the "RNA world." In living cells, genetic information is carried by DNA, and most cellular functions are carried out by proteins. However, RNA is capable of both carrying genetic information and catalyzing some biochemical reactions. As a result, some theorists postulate the first life might have used RNA alone to fulfill all these functions.
But there are many problems with this hypothesis.
For one, the first RNA molecules would have to arise by unguided, non-biological chemical processes. But RNA is not known to assemble without the help of a skilled laboratory chemist intelligently guiding the process. New York University chemist Robert Shapiro critiqued the efforts of those who tried to make RNA in the lab, stating: "The flaw is in the logic -- that this experimental control by researchers in a modern laboratory could have been available on the early Earth."15
Second, while RNA has been shown to perform many roles in the cell, there is no evidence that it could perform all the necessary cellular functions currently carried out by proteins.16
Third, the RNA world hypothesis does not explain the origin of genetic information.
RNA world advocates suggest that if the first self-replicating life was based upon RNA, it would have required a molecule between 200 and 300 nucleotides in length.17 However, there are no known chemical or physical laws that dictate the order of those nucleotides.18 To explain the ordering of nucleotides in the first self-replicating RNA molecule, materialists must rely on sheer chance. But the odds of specifying, say, 250 nucleotides in an RNA molecule by chance is about 1 in 10150 -- below the universal probability boundary, or events which are remotely possible to occur within the history of the universe.19 Shapiro puts the problem this way: 

The sudden appearance of a large self-copying molecule such as RNA was exceedingly improbable. ... [The probability] is so vanishingly small that its happening even once anywhere in the visible universe would count as a piece of exceptional good luck.20

Fourth -- and most fundamentally -- the RNA world hypothesis does not explain the origin of the genetic code itself. In order to evolve into the DNA / protein-based life that exists today, the RNA world would need to evolve the ability to convert genetic information into proteins. However, this process of transcription and translation requires a large suite of proteins and molecular machines -- which themselves are encoded by genetic information. This poses a chicken-and-egg problem, where essential enzymes and molecular machines are needed to perform the very task that constructs them.
The Chicken and the DVD
To appreciate this problem, consider the origin of the first DVD and DVD player. DVDs are rich in information, but without the machinery of a DVD player to read the disk, process its information, and convert it into a picture and sound, the disk would be useless. But what if the instructions for building the first DVD player were only found encoded on a DVD? You could never play the DVD to learn how to build a DVD player. So how did the first disk and DVD player system arise? The answer is obvious: a goal directed process -- intelligent design -- is required to produce both the player and the disk at the same time.
In living cells, information-carrying molecules (e.g. DNA or RNA) are like the DVD, and the cellular machinery which reads that information and converts it into proteins are like the DVD player. Just like the DVD analogy, genetic information can never be converted into proteins without the proper machinery. Yet in cells, the machines required for processing the genetic information in RNA or DNA are encoded by those same genetic molecules -- they perform and direct the very task that builds them.
This system cannot exist unless both the genetic information and transcription / translation machinery are present at the same time, and unless both speak the same language. Biologist Frank Salisbury explained this problem in a paper in American Biology Teacher not long after the workings of the genetic code were first uncovered:

It's nice to talk about replicating DNA molecules arising in a soupy sea, but in modern cells this replication requires the presence of suitable enzymes. ... [T]he link between DNA and the enzyme is a highly complex one, involving RNA and an enzyme for its synthesis on a DNA template; ribosomes; enzymes to activate the amino acids; and transfer-RNA molecules. ... How, in the absence of the final enzyme, could selection act upon DNA and all the mechanisms for replicating it? It's as though everything must happen at once: the entire system must come into being as one unit, or it is worthless. There may well be ways out of this dilemma, but I don't see them at the moment.21

Despite decades of work, origin-of-life theorists are still at a loss to explain how this system arose. In 2007, Harvard chemist George Whitesides was given the Priestley Medal, the highest award of the American Chemical Society. During his acceptance speech, he offered this stark analysis, reprinted in the respected journal, Chemical and Engineering News:

The Origin of Life. This problem is one of the big ones in science. It begins to place life, and us, in the universe. Most chemists believe, as do I, that life emerged spontaneously from mixtures of molecules in the prebiotic Earth. How? I have no idea.22

Similarly, the aforementioned article in Cell Biology International concludes: "New approaches to investigating the origin of the genetic code are required. The constraints of historical science are such that the origin of life may never be understood."23 That is, they may never be understood unless scientists are willing to consider goal-directed scientific explanations like intelligent design.
But there is a much deeper problem with theories of chemical evolution, as well as biological evolution. This pertains not just to the ability to process genetic information via a genetic code, but the origin of that information itself.


http://www.evolutionnews.org/2015/01/problem_2_ungui091111.html