https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t2416-intelligent-design-qualifies-as-a-scientific-theory
Ariel de la Torre : To say ID is scientific is like saying "here's a car, now by only studying the mechanisms of this car, prove to me how it was manufactured." It's a philosophical position with scientific implications.
Hypothesis (Prediction): Natural structures will be found that contain many parts arranged in intricate patterns, metabolic pathways similar to electronic circuits, sophisticated language, and translation systems, indicating high levels of Information, and interdependence, like hard/software. No instructional information, nor codes or ciphers ( translators ) can exist and will be found without an initial mental source, since complex specified information is, by its nature, a mental and not a material quantity.
Observation: The genetic code system is a language, and the universal code is nearly optimal and maximally efficient ( only 1 in every million random alternative codes generated is more efficient than the genetic code ). Genomes use the genetic code to write two separate languages, besides a cipher, to translate codon triplets into an amino acid "alphabet" constituent of 20 different left-handed amino acids to make proteins. One code describes how proteins are made, and the other instructs the cell on how genes are controlled and when expressed. There are 13 characteristics of human language. DNA shares 10 of them ( all LEVELS of Information: Statistics, Syntax, Semantics, Pragmatics, Apobetics are used ) This comparison between cell language and human language is not a loose analogy - it’s literal. Human language and cell language both employ multilayered symbols to produce a blueprint - required to describe an artifact and in biology, an organism.
DNA sequences that code for proteins needs to convey, in addition to the protein-coding information, several different signals at the same time. These “parallel codes” include binding sequences for regulatory and structural proteins, signals for splicing, and RNA secondary structure. The universal genetic code can efficiently carry arbitrary parallel codes much better than the vast majority of other possible genetic codes. This property is related to the identity of the stop codons. We find that the ability to support parallel codes is strongly tied to another useful property of the genetic code—minimization of the effects of frameshift translation errors. Whereas many of the known regulatory codes reside in nontranslated regions of the genome, the present findings suggest that protein-coding regions can readily carry abundant additional information. The output are thousands of essential proteins and enzymes required for life; sophisticated molecular machinery is needed to replicate the code (for inheritance/perpetuation), transcribe it, translate it into protein with many intermediate steps requiring highly specific operations, and to repair it in the foreseen event that it is damaged (to preserve/protect it) or destroy it in the event that it suffers irreparable damage (to forestall cancer). besides the standard genetic code, other 23 genetic codes are known, besides epigenetic codes, that is, the Splicing Code, the Metabolic Code, the Signal Transduction Codes, the Signal Integration Codes , the Histone Code, the Tubulin Code, the Sugar Code, and the Glycomic Code, all essential to define a organism and phenotype.
Experiment :
One language is written on top of the other, which is why the second language remained hidden for so long. Biologic systems and processes cannot be fully accounted for in terms of the principles and laws of physics and chemistry alone, but they require in addition the principles of semiotics—the science of symbols and signs, including linguistics. Summarizing the state of the art in the study of the code evolution, science cannot escape considerable skepticism. It seems that the two-pronged fundamental questions: “why is the genetic code the way it is and how did it come to be?”, that was asked over 50 years ago, at the dawn of molecular biology, might remain pertinent even in another 50 years, if methodological naturalism is adopted, and only natural explanations for its origin are permitted. The consolation is that scientists cannot think of a more fundamental problem in biology. Despite extensive and, in many cases, elaborate attempts to model code optimization, ingenious theorizing along the lines of the coevolution theory, and considerable experimentation, very little definitive progress has been made.
The British biologist John Maynard Smith has described the origin of the code as the most perplexing problem in evolutionary biology. With collaborator Eörs Szathmáry he writes: “The existing translational machinery is at the same time so complex, so universal, and so essential that it is hard to see how it could have come into existence, or how life could have existed without it.” To get some idea of why the code is such an enigma, consider whether there is anything special about the numbers involved. Why do life use twenty amino acids and four nucleotide bases? It would be far simpler to employ, say, sixteen amino acids and package the four bases into doublets rather than triplets. Easier still would be to have just two bases and use a binary code, like a computer. If a simpler system had evolved, it is hard to see how the more complicated triplet code would ever take over. The answer could be a case of “It was a good idea at the time.” A good idea of whom? If the code evolved at a very early stage in the history of life, perhaps even during its prebiotic phase, the numbers four and twenty may have been the best way to go for chemical reasons relevant at that stage. Life simply got stuck with these numbers thereafter, their original purpose lost. Or perhaps the use of four and twenty is the optimum way to do it. There is an advantage in life’s employing many varieties of amino acid because they can be strung together in more ways to offer a wider selection of proteins. But there is also a price: with increasing numbers of amino acids, the risk of translation errors grows. With too many amino acids around, there would be a greater likelihood that the wrong one would be hooked onto the protein chain. So maybe twenty is a good compromise. Do random chemical reactions have the knowledge to arrive at an optimal conclusion or a " good compromise"?
An even tougher problem concerns the coding assignments—i.e., which triplets code for which amino acids. How did these designations come about? Because nucleic-acid bases and amino acids don’t recognize each other directly but have to deal via chemical intermediaries, there is no obvious reason why particular triplets should go with particular amino acids. Other translations are conceivable. Coded instructions are a good idea, but the actual code seems to be pretty arbitrary. Perhaps it is simply a frozen accident, a random choice that just locked itself in, with no deeper significance.
Intelligent agents act frequently with an end goal in mind, constructing complex multipart-machines, that require a blueprint to build the object. Furthermore, Computers integrate software/hardware and store high levels of instructional complex coded information. In our experience, systems that either a) require or b) store large amounts of specified/instructed complex information such as codes and languages, and which are constructed in an interdependence of hard and software invariably originate from an intelligent source. No exception. There is a presence of an identical feature in both DNA and intelligently designed codes, languages, and artifacts. Because we know intelligent agents can (and do) produce complex and functionally specified sequences of symbols and arrangements of matter, intelligent agency qualifies as an adequate causal explanation for the origin of this effect. Since, in addition, materialistic theories have proven universally inadequate for explaining the origin of coded information and translation systems, intelligent causation stands as the only entity with the causal power known to produce this feature of living systems.
Falsification: Nobody has yet been able to demonstrate naturally emerging informational systems based on codes and ciphers, and instructional information stored within these codes to produce a defined complex specified outcome. Perry Marshall, the author of the book Evolution 2.0, has yet to pay the prize to someone that will come up and will meet the challenge.
http://cosmicfingerprints.com/solve/
Natural Code LLC is a Private Equity Investment group formed to identify a naturally occurring code. Our mission is to discover, develop and commercialize core principles of nature which give rise to information, consciousness, and intelligence. Natural Code LLC will pay the researcher $100,000 for the initial discovery of such a code. If the newly discovered process is defensible patentable, we will secure the patent(s). Once patents are granted, we will pay the full prize amount to the discoverer in exchange for the rights. Our investment group will locate or develop commercial applications for the technology. The discoverer will retain a small percentage of ongoing ownership of the technology. Prize amount as of July 2016 is $3 million. The prize caps at $10 million.
Objection: Intelligent design is not science. "The Intelligent Design hypothesis is untestable by science, exactly because we can never empirically know or understand the actions of ... any ... Intelligent Designer."
Answer: In order to make design predictions, it must be established what can be recognized as design in nature - Something having the PROPERTIES that we might attribute to that of an intelligently designed system. We can use observations of how intelligent agents act when designing things. By observing human intelligent agents, there is actually quite a bit we can learn to know and understand the actions of intelligent designers Intelligent design is falsifiable: any positive demonstration that instructional complex coded information as stored in DNA and epigenetic codes can easily be generated by non design mechanisms is a potential falsification of the ID theory
more:
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2011/03/a_closer_look_at_one_scientist045311.html
Objection: the evidence in the Dover trial disproves ID as a scientific theory
Answer: ask ANY real scientist, if he thinks the best way to proceed in scientific truth, is to have courts of law decide what scientific theories should be accepted.
http://reasonandscience.heavenforum.org/t1795-the-dover-case-a-good-argument-against-id
Objection: Well, we don’t have another universe to compare ours to, and as Hume points out, that’s exactly the problem.
Answer: It's not a problem at all. We just need to define what distinguished designed objects from things that emerge randomly.
1. High information content (or specified complexity) and irreducible complexity constitute strong indicators or hallmarks of (past) intelligent design.
2. Biological systems have a high information content (or specified complexity) and utilize subsystems that manifest irreducible complexity.
3. Naturalistic mechanisms or undirected causes do not suffice to explain the origin of information (specified complexity) or irreducible complexity.
4. Therefore, intelligent design constitutes the best explanations for the origin of information and irreducible complexity in biological systems.
http://reasonandscience.heavenforum.org/t2395-intelligent-design-is-science
Further readings:
Confirmation of intelligent design predictions
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t1659-confirmation-of-intelligent-design-predictions
The genetic code cannot arise through natural selection
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t1405-the-genetic-code-cannot-arise-through-natural-selection
Coded information comes always from a mind
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t1312-coded-information-comes-always-from-a-mind
DNA stores literally coded information
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t1281-dna-stores-literally-coded-information
The genetic code, insurmountable problem for non-intelligent origin
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t2363-the-genetic-code-unsurmountable-problem-for-non-intelligent-origin
Origin of translation of the 4 nucleic acid bases and the 20 amino acids, and the universal assignment of codons to amino acids
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t2057-origin-of-translation-of-the-4-nucleic-acid-bases-and-the-20-amino-acids-and-the-universal-assignment-of-codons-to-amino-acids
The origin of the genetic cipher, the most perplexing problem in biology
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t2267-the-origin-of-the-genetic-cipher-the-most-perplexing-problem-in-biology
A landmark book and cornerstone of ID theory from Prof.Dr. Werner Gitt
In the Beginning was Information
https://bruderhand.de/download/Werner_Gitt/Englisch-Am_Anfang_war_die_Info.pdf
Last edited by Admin on Tue Mar 20, 2018 10:28 am; edited 9 times in total