…and this is a 
Everything you need to know about ID
Category: Creationism
Posted on: October 11, 2008 10:23 AM, by PZ Myers
It's a wonder that these people know how to tie their own shoes. I was sent a link to Perry Marshall's Intelligent Evolution Quick Guide, and it is certainly a fine example of the kind of reasoning that allows creationism to thrive. It's a short guide, but it goes on for over a page, when the essential syllogism that defines ID is actually presented in three all-encompassing lines.
DNA is not just a molecule - it is a coding system with a language & alphabet, and contains a message
All languages, codes and messages come from a mind
Therefore DNA was designed by a Mind
As I'm sure all of you sensible readers can immediately detect, his first premise is a deeply flawed analogy and his second is simply undemonstrated and entirely false, so his "therefore" is unwarranted. Three lines, three errors: a perfect representation of creationist thought.
I give to you the cockroach. It contains DNA, and it copies it and propagates it to the next generation of cockroaches, yet is it even aware of its DNA? Does it use its tiny little cockroach mind to construct a complex molecule? No. Mindless chemistry does it. There is no thought behind the synthesis and modification of the DNA molecule at all, yet it is true that it carries out complex activities with the aid of other molecules in the cytoplasm…but without the assistance of any intelligent beings at all.
Similarly, I give you the creationist. They contain DNA, and a large brain as well, but they don't use that brain at all in producing progeny. After a little embarrassed tickle and grunt, mindless chemistry takes over in fertilization and development, and 9 months later, another mind emerges from one of their unencephalized wombs. We can trace the origins of that DNA back and back and back, and at no point in its history does it seem to be produced by conscious design, and the farther back we look, the less available potential there was for intelligent intervention. Bacteria are even less clever than cockroaches, you know.
If you want to understand our history and our evolution, the first concept you have to be able to grasp is that natural processes produce all the complexity and diversity of extant life without the guiding hand of any external agents. Once you've realized that, it becomes apparent that we can work backwards through our ancestry without invoking magic or cosmic helpers — that Intelligent Design creationism is a superfluous hypothesis that can be dismissed in the absence of any corroborating evidence.
Comments
Posted by: Cuttlefish, OM | October 11, 2008 10:32 AM
God is a cockroach?
Explains a lot, actually.
Now I understand...
Posted by: Aquaria | October 11, 2008 10:34 AM
Cockroaches = Creationists?
But come on, human sex can be be even more mindless than the example given!You know, like when the embarrassed tickle and grunt happens when the XY partner is passed out from too much Boone's Farm.
Posted by: Kel | October 11, 2008 10:36 AM
Maybe it's best to look at creationism as a meme. It's a meme that if it gets beyond the intellectual level of moron, then morons won't be able to understand it. Ideas like that are for the scientifically illiterate, the mentally ill and Robert Byers (who is in a category of his own).
Posted by: Aquaria | October 11, 2008 10:37 AM
Argh. XY should have been XX. Although I guess it could have been the original assertion, too. I understand they like to be caught unawares.
So to speak..
Posted by: Owlimirror | October 11, 2008 10:39 AM
I was pondering (2) for a bit, since it seems almost tautological... and then I remembered our good old friends from psychology, paradolia and apophenia. And the recent finding that suggests that human minds that are under stress may actually be more likely to tend to perceive patterns that simply are not there. And that religion and other superstitions might therefore be self-reinforcing loops of stress and pattern recognition... Hm.
Posted by: Yet Another Mike | October 11, 2008 10:44 AM
Er... I'm not sure the cockroach analogy works. It just moves the POV up a level. Couldn't the IDiot just say the roach was designed that way by the DNA coder?
Posted by: Elliott | October 11, 2008 10:45 AM
" . . . his second [premise] is simply undemonstrated and entirely false . . ."
It is undemonstrated, but I believe it to be true -- as far as it goes. The question is: which mind creates the message?
Perhaps it is the duty of the ostensible receiver of a message to prove that there really was a message to be received.
Posted by: Thom | October 11, 2008 10:45 AM
I don't know about the rest of you, but I am totally conscious of every copy of my DNA that is made and, in fact, control the process. My DNA is coded in Español. Thats right, I'm God.
Posted by: Jared | October 11, 2008 10:46 AM
Aquaria, that goes both ways, though... It's not just when XX is passed out, sometimes XY is the unconscious one also...
Posted by: Thom | October 11, 2008 10:48 AM
I don't know about the rest of you, but I am totally conscious of every copy of my DNA that is made and, in fact, control the process. My DNA is coded in Español. Thats right, I'm God.
Posted by: Janine ID AKA The Lone Drinker | October 11, 2008 10:50 AM
Using this "logic", could one argue that genetic illnesses come about when the big sky daddy stutters?
Posted by: TSC | October 11, 2008 10:58 AM
And RNA must have been the inferior version of God's mind.
Posted by: trj | October 11, 2008 10:59 AM
Humans represent information using their languages. This is not the same as information BEING a language, a message, or an alphabet.
And I see the author has as much idea of information as he has of mutation.
All in all: FAIL.
Posted by: Nerd of Redhead | October 11, 2008 11:06 AM
Let's see. There is a Nobel prize waiting for someone who proves evolution is wrong. But the ID crowd is too cowardly to try to publish their work in the science literature so they could get a chance for the prize. Therefore, one must conclude that they know they are running a scam that cannot stand up to any scrutiny. QED
Posted by: Luis | October 11, 2008 11:23 AM
This reminds me of the scene in Cryptonomicon where Lawrence Waterhouse philosophizes that, when the Japanese get a new boat into the sea in Japan, some ripples and waves are produce. These ripples affect the movements of the surface of the water in small but chaos-theoretically recursive ways that eventually reach the US West Coast. Thus, if one had an advanced enough mathematics (plus ripple-observation powers), one could determine how many ships the Japanese are constructing in Tokyo simply by looking at the waves that arrive in San Diego.
By analogy with the ID crowd, Waterhouse could have said that the waves of the ocean are a language, and that since all languages are created by a mind, then it must have been the Japanese who created the ocean!
Posted by: chancelikely | October 11, 2008 11:23 AM
Nerd of Redhead #14: That's where you invoke the conspiracy to keep creationism and other non-facts out of science, or whine about how They're Being Mean To Us.
Posted by: DaveL | October 11, 2008 11:40 AM
I think it bears repeating that DNA is not a code, nor a language, and it does not have an alphabet.
Codes and languages are abstractions. We use the symbol "T" to stand for a certain phoneme. It needn't be that particular symbol. We could have used "%" instead and the language works just as well. Similarly "AGCTTCAT" is a code that represents a DNA sequence. We could just as easily write "12344314" to stand for the same sequence.
None of that is true for actual DNA. You cannot simply replace every instance of an adenine base with, say, benzene and have everything work out as before. DNA doesn't stand for something, it is the thing.
Posted by: zaardvark | October 11, 2008 11:54 AM
Why attempt a serious argument, when you can just declare victory?
Point 3) is soooooo adorable. I guess tree rings don't count as messages, even though they are precisely that -- information coded in symbolic form, because there was no "intent", in their creation. But DNA -- why, it's just obvious that there is intent there.
Just a wee bit circular, this.
Posted by: eLD | October 11, 2008 11:59 AM
To me, point 1 sounds like its more or less correct. If you take language to be a formal language such as a programming language, then the bases and larger scale patterns are just part of the syntax and semantics of the DNA-based language for a particular type of cell. He has conflated the concept of DNA and language though as the DNA is just the embodiment of the language, the language itself is defined by the way the cell reacts to the molecule. DNA is a program, the cell's machinery a computer.
Point 2 is demonstrably false though. You could write a program to encode information of particular events using random words and grammar. It wouldn't be a 'mind' creating the language, it would be the random number generator. With enough data another program could learn and interpret that language. You would have two things communicating without a mind designing the detail of the language. Of course, you could use a genetic algorithm to deduce the rules of the language.
Posted by: Sastra | October 11, 2008 12:16 PM
There's obviously a bit of equivocation going on here with different meanings of the words "code" and "messages." But Perry Marshall may have accidentally hit on a way to actually demonstrate Intelligent Design -- if it were true.
Remember the fuss several years back about the "Equidistant letter sequences in the Book of Genesis?" This was a poorly-done paper published in a statistics journal that inspired an even worse book, The Bible Code. I remember it -- all these apologists were trumpeting that there was now a mathematical and verifiable proof that the Bible could not have been the work of ordinary humans.
If you laid the original letters from the Torah (or other Bible books) out in a grid pattern and selected letters equally spaced according to some starting "skip" number, you would find coded messages in encrypted form which made predictions, included predictions for the 20th century. Only God could do that!
Trouble was, anyone could do it, because it was all very sloppy, and computers can always find some sort of pattern in noise. You could find messages in any book, including War and Peace -- and statistics buffs had a field day "finding" loopy messages.
BUT, there could have been a tighter evidence for a real hidden code, had everything been clear, consistent, and specific. Carl Sagan, in the book Contact, hypothesized a similar proof of a cosmic Designer with codes hidden in pi.
It almost sounds as if Marshall is proposing a kind of equidistant letter sequences in DNA -- which spell out "HI THERE" or "I GOD MADE THIS STUFF DAWKINS YOU DOPE" over and over. He's not (I think).
But if he were -- and it really worked -- and it persuaded experts in the related fields -- then yes, I think that would indicate Intelligent Design. Empirical evidence FOR, as opposed to the usual attempts to disprove "Darwinism."
Instead, he's just using an old bait 'n switch with talk of "messages" and "codes." Disappointing.
Posted by: JD | October 11, 2008 12:17 PM
Nonsense. All languages are arbitrary. DNA is not. At best, one could say DNA is a template, but not a code. At least not at all like the code of language or software. PZ has it right, DNA and the reactions that create proteins are just chemistry. That guanine pairs only with cytosine or adenine only with thymine is not arbitrary. The language/code analogy completely falls apart given this fact.
Marshall's argument has been thoroughly demolished and PWND all over the web. See this thread at IIDB for just one example.
Posted by: Kim | October 11, 2008 12:21 PM
PZ, why do you still waste so much time on something so obvious?
Posted by: Cuttlefish, OM | October 11, 2008 12:32 PM
The code contained in DNA
Is evidence, or so they say,
God's handiwork, there on display, the product of His Mind.
It's plainly seen by any fool
It's more than just a molecule
But rather, a precision tool that shows that we're designed!
This molecule contains the clues
Creationists can gladly use
To show we did not come from ooze, through natural selection;
No "nature, red in tooth and claw"
But God, in wonderment and awe
Created, like a man of straw, his image in reflection.
Rest of poem here.
Posted by: Brain Hertz | October 11, 2008 12:32 PM
In the sense in which the term "code" is used in information theory, this is just not true. DNA clearly is a code.
Sure it is. Whether or not the "meaning" (whatever that is) is not qualitatively the same as a human language has no bearing on whether or not you're looking at a code.
And a radio transmitter sending messages is just physics.
Doesn't have to be for information to be encoded. There are a large number of permitted sequences, and which sequence you have encodes information which can be retrieved.
The problem here is that it isn't an analogy. DNA isn't like a code. It is a code.
The flaw in the original argument isn't in point 1. It's in point 2, for which there is no support. The example of tree rings by zaardvark at #18 is a pretty good example.
Posted by: CW | October 11, 2008 12:33 PM
Ever get the feeling that whenever anyone else speaks they just jam their fingers in their ears and "La-la-la-I-can't-hear-you" ? How else could they honestly keep saying such idiotic things.
...oh, right. Honestly. Nevermind.
Posted by: Patricia | October 11, 2008 12:41 PM
Cuttlefish, you sly ol' slut - your link leads to a 'no page found' for the Digital Cuttlefish. Keeping the naughty bits of DNA in your personal stash what, what?!
Posted by: Another Primate | October 11, 2008 12:53 PM
I've had it! There is no reasoning with these people. They are fuck tards and I can't take it any more. Let's get all of us atheist and agnostics together and liquidate all of our possessions to buy our own island somewhere. When the credulous fuck tards realize that the people who make the largest contributions to civilization have left and life for them begins to move back toward the dark ages, MAYBE THEN THEY MIGHT WAKE THE F>>> UP!
Sorry, I just had an encounter with two guys (mormons) riding bicycles before reading this post! Can't deal with that much stupidity inside a 15 min. time span.....
Posted by: Conor H. | October 11, 2008 1:02 PM
"All known examples of evolution (genetic programs, social progress) have an ability to Evolve that is designed in."
It really torques me when people equate evolution in the biological sense to some sort of colonial notion of the onward march of civilisation.
Then there's this gem: Under natural patterns like hurricanes and snowflakes it says "Everyday interactions of matter & energy produce these things" but under plans, human language, computer language and DNA it says "Always require a designer". Ummm, DNA dimerization and all the other processes of biochemistry ARE everyday interactions of matter and energy.
That entire page reads like something a 15 year old christian apologist would write for a high school rhetoric class.
Posted by: Quiet_Desperation | October 11, 2008 1:08 PM
one could determine how many ships the Japanese are constructing in Tokyo simply by looking at the waves that arrive in San Diego.
I always read things like this (the butterflies causing hurricanes being another common example), but wouldn't the effects be completely dampened out beyond a certain distance, or irretrievably swamped by other sources of noise? It makes for a fanciful thought experiment, but I just can't see it working like that in the real world. It sounds like something out of an episode of "24" where they magically process a blurry security cam photo of a person to such a level of clarity they can just read his genetic code right off the image.
I guess it's my years of communication link design speaking. I know how easy it is for information to become irrevocably lost due to noise and channel distortions. That's what they pay me the big bucks to mitigate. :-) Generally, it involves doing things at the information source before you transmit.
Everything is a communication channel of a sort, be it the atmosphere with tiny winds from a butterfly wing or the ocean with waves from a ship entering the water. The Shannon limit is going to stomp your information at some point.
Even if you could somehow isolate the effects of the Japanese ships in the water near San Diego, the data would be corrupted beyond usefulness. Imagine trying to spot a small pattern few molecules in height relative to the surrounding landscape. And the landscape is the Himalayas. And you have to do it from a satellite. In orbit around the Moon. :)
Posted by: DaveH | October 11, 2008 1:09 PM
@Sastra #20
You mean this? http://cs.anu.edu.au/~bdm/dilugim/moby.html
Pretty good stuff. I've encountered bible code nuts fairly recently, they'll never accept that they've been pwned.
As to Sagan's "messages in pi" stuff. They're there! If you calculate pi to enough decimal places, you will come across a section of 1s and 0s which will translate into the ASCII code for "Worship the tentacled one, O ye sluts!" Fact!
Posted by: Michael | October 11, 2008 1:28 PM
Like the experts in economics who have not anticipated this particular crisis, a lot of evolutionists have a very narrow perspective.They remind me of early priests, who are so tied to there belief/understanding, they simply do not have the capacity to think outside the box of their specialty. There is waiting in the wings a version of Intelligent Design, which if true is indeed earthshaking - if one does not take this one seriously, then presumably one does not take the issue of nuclear weapons and the dangers of nuclear war seriously.Wonder when the ' penny is going to drop' , before the bombs or after.Until the scientific community starts to take this particular theory more seriously, our humanity is collectively doomed by it's own stupidity.Where is the evidence you may ask, and I would reply, it is all around you - world RELIGIONS, history, UFOS, population increase in last 65 years,environment changing.27000 nuclear weapons, and what science is doing today.If our scientists are doing what they are doing , why not more advanced scientists, in other solar systems. This theory is offering a PREDICTION. and not mysticism. Requires one to make an interdisciplinary synthesis of all the information available in the world.Wake up we are in the 21st century and connect up the dots.
Posted by: QrazyQat | October 11, 2008 1:28 PM
The IIDB thread (linked by a commenter above) is instructive, for those who want to follow people patiently, and sometimes not so patiently, explaining to dense people what an analogy is. Calling DNA a code, and what it does language, is an analogy, but fundies seem to have their Morton's Demons working full time to keep that simple notion away from anything moist and gooey inside their craniums.
BTW, I think I show up in that thread -- I did in one on the subject there -- under my handle anthrosciguy.
Posted by: blueelm | October 11, 2008 1:33 PM
He could have brushed up on his understanding of semiotics as well. If DNA is a message, who is the receiver? What community agreed on it's denotative meaning? By his logic any phenomenon observed is just as valid as a sign or message and the bit about DNA is irrelevant.
Posted by: Michael | October 11, 2008 1:34 PM
Like the experts in economics who have not anticipated this particular crisis, a lot of evolutionists have a very narrow perspective.They remind me of early priests, who are so tied to there belief/understanding, they simply do not have the capacity to think outside the box of their specialty. There is waiting in the wings a version of Intelligent Design, which if true is indeed earthshaking - if one does not take this one seriously, then presumably one does not take the issue of nuclear weapons and the dangers of nuclear war seriously.Wonder when the ' penny is going to drop' , before the bombs or after.Until the scientific community starts to take this particular theory more seriously, our humanity is collectively doomed by it's own stupidity.Where is the evidence you may ask, and I would reply, it is all around you - world RELIGIONS, history, UFOs, population increase in last 65 years,environment changing.27000 nuclear weapons, and what science is doing today.If our scientists are doing what they are doing , why not more advanced scientists, in other solar systems. This theory is offering a PREDICTION. and not mysticism. Requires one to make an interdisciplinary synthesis of all the information available in the world.Wake up we are in the 21st century and connect up the dots.
Posted by: Cuttlefish, OM | October 11, 2008 1:49 PM
*blush*
Fixed--thanks, Patricia @#26.
Or, here:
http://digitalcuttlefish.blogspot.com/2008/10/quack-guide-to-intelligent-evolution.html
Posted by: Dust | October 11, 2008 1:49 PM
Of natural patterns like hurricanes and snowflakes it says: Everyday interactions of matter & energy produce these things
No, no, no!
Hurricanes, cyclones, blizzards ect. aren't mindless everyday interactions of matter & energy--they are messages from god telling us how bad the Darwinists, atheists, gays, femminists and Democrats are!!! Doesn't the author know that?? And he calls himself a believer?
Scheesh! FAIL
Posted by: Blake Stacey | October 11, 2008 2:02 PM
Serious brain-wrong here:
Nuclear weapons are a problem because they work, which implies that our understanding of nuclear reactions is essentially correct. (We're smart enough to build 'em and dumb enough to use 'em.) Taking the issue of nuclear weapons seriously means understanding the power of scientific knowledge. The same goes for "the dangers of nuclear war", since we know about hazards such as fallout and nuclear winter because we do science.
So: Michael seems to equate credence in a myth (Intelligent Design) with understanding of science (nuclear physics). I think somebody missed a step.
Posted by: Lowell | October 11, 2008 2:03 PM
Michael,
Seriously. What the hell are you talking about? That made no sense whatsoever.
Posted by: Kagehi | October 11, 2008 2:05 PM
Hmm.. Take a million wooden boards, fire a million random nail guns at them, then pick the 100 that "work" like pachinko machines (where you drop the ball in and the pins direct it to fall into different slots on the bottom, for anyone who doesn't know what that is, or in case I misspelled it. lol) Are the nails a "code"? Is there some "message" involved? Hell, even though, in this case, you can prove someone fired the damn nail gun, was it "intelligently designed"? Well - 1) Only if you presume #3, 2) Not really, even if you "do" presume #3, and 3) Not unless you have no damn clue how they actually where made. Yet, some imbecile who wanted to prove that all pachinko machines where "designed" would make precisely that argument, and a lot of other imbeciles would believe it.
Yeah. Not a terribly believable argument for DNA being a fracking intelligent language.
Posted by: Rick R | October 11, 2008 2:06 PM
Michael @ #34- You know it, man!
I need to talk about my cat. For a long time, I have had a growing suspicion that she may be trying to communicate a message through her meows. I sense something vital in her intent. I can see the earnestness in her gaze. If I could only understand!!
It is for this reason I have decided to eat nothing but cat food for the next month. I know it is my slavish, almost priestly devotion to the old ways of knowing, and it is my backwards reliance on things like the english alphabet, words and sentences and stuff, that are holding me back. And I have decided to alter my body chemistry nutritionally so I can begin to understand the feline wisdom I am so obviously blocking myself to. Soon I will know what she is trying to say, and my life will be richer.
I am on the verge of a great discovery.
Posted by: BdN | October 11, 2008 2:06 PM
Michael is a raelian...
Posted by: Nerd of Redhead | October 11, 2008 2:09 PM
Michael, science will go where the evidence takes it. Right now there is no proof for god, and various religions on earth are just proof that humans band together under various banners. No more, no less, and no god. There is also no proof that aliens seeded the earth. At the moment, I have a program running the background looking for these aliens via Seti@Home. So far, ET is being elusive. Science is well aware of the seed theory and will investigate it as new information becomes available.
Posted by: Gregory Kusnick | October 11, 2008 2:10 PM
#17:
But you can replace thymine with uracil in RNA, and everything does work out, in the sense that the information encoded is not altered by the substitution.
#21:
But the choice of particular triplets of base pairs to represent particular amino acids is (as far as we know) arbitrary. That's established by the set of available transfer RNAs, not by the fundamental chemistry of DNA. You could in principle replace the existing tRNAs with an entirely different mapping, and recode all the DNA accordingly, and things would still work. In fact I seem to recall that this has actually been done experimentally, although I don't have a citation; can anyone verify? There are also naturally occurring variations to the standard genetic code.
Posted by: BdN | October 11, 2008 2:12 PM
There may be no proof that aliens seeded the earth, but we sure have one that spooky slime has seeded his head...
Posted by: JD | October 11, 2008 2:15 PM
That is not at all the sense with which Marshall was employing it. Or did you miss that? As I stated, DNA is not a code in the way language or software is code. The latter can be described as abstract symbols used to convey a message. DNA and its process isn't anything like that. One could only call it a code in the very narrow sense of the term, that is, as a process that maps a specific input to a specific output. This is how the term "genetic code" was originally meant. It was simply a description of the biochemistry linking a sequence of nucleotide triplets to a sequence of amino acids for synthesis of a spefice chain of peptides or proteins (i.e., a specific input to a specific output).
IDiots and creotards love to conflate and equivocate these two very different meanings of code.
You left this somewhat vague, but if by sending a message by radio you meant a human transmitted message, then there's the equivocation of definitions I was referring to.
Unlike every human made code, "DNA to protein" is completely contained within the physical layer. There are no higher levels of arbitrary abstractions. DNA sequences don't symbolically represent anything. They are simply physical entities (chemical molecules) that chemically react to form other chemicals. In the sense Marshall was clearly implying, DNA is no more a code than water (oxygen codes hydrogen?) or table salt (Na codes chlorine?). Nor is the sun code for a clock.
False. The analogy fails right at step 1. because Marshall equivocates two very different meanings of code. DNA is not a code in the way language or software are codes and that clearly is what he asserts.Posted by: Lowell | October 11, 2008 2:15 PM
Rick R wins the thread!
And best of luck, Rick, in your quest for feline enlightenment! Maybe if you're successful you'll be able to translate Michael's post.
Posted by: BdN | October 11, 2008 2:30 PM
From his website :
"Once one has this scientific concept in mind, then the original function of all the world religions becomes more understandable . This is against a backdrop of there having been many humanities on this very ancient planet, which have disappeared for the rather self-evident reasons we can see today, namely nuclear war, over population and environmental degradation. Further the planet is indeed very ancient and is a sort of a "living machine. Man is a "disease" of the universe and there are an infinite number of human races "out there". "
Posted by: Phoenix Woman | October 11, 2008 2:34 PM
But but but God designed DNA using the Western alphabet! (Just kidding!)
Here's another way to think of it:
Sudoku puzzles don't need to use numbers to work, and you don't need to be literate to solve them. For the purposes of the Sudoku puzzle, you can use words, letters, or pictures, or anything else that can be seen and depicted on paper. (I've seen baseball Sudokus that use the common shorthand for player positions: SS, P, C, 1B, 2B, etc.)
Posted by: weemaryanne | October 11, 2008 2:36 PM
"What does God want with a starship?" inquired Captain James T. Kirk in one of very many geeky movies.
And: "Why does God need an engineer to prove His existence?" inquires Weemaryanne.
Posted by: JD | October 11, 2008 2:37 PM
Re: #47
Sounds like he's another woo-tard mesmerized by the Gaia hypothesis.
Posted by: Tim H | October 11, 2008 2:43 PM
Give NOT to me the cockroach, please. Somebody did that for me already this morning. I nuked it with Raid. Fortunately, I have, to this point, not had an infestation of creationists in my apartment.
Posted by: scooter | October 11, 2008 3:05 PM
Michael @ 31
Turn off Coast to Coast radio for a couple of weeks, your brain is melting.
Posted by: Brain Hertz | October 11, 2008 3:21 PM
I disagree; I think that's exactly the sense in which he was using the term "code". DNA encodes information, which can correctly be referred to as a "message". That term doesn't imply that it was generated by anybody sentient or has an intended recipient. The flaw in his argument is in step 2, not step 1.
And I continue to disagree.
It isn't? The symbols are concrete, of course, but why does that make it not a code?
Why is that narrow, and why does it not apply here?
I guess I'm not seing the "simply" part. But in any case, complexity doesn't alter what it is. DNA most certainly encodes information.
What they're conflating is the use of the term "message" to imply that there must be some sort of sentient generator and intended recipient. There's nothing in the use of the term "code" which implies that.
Posted by: LotharLoo | October 11, 2008 3:28 PM
Isn't he the same asshole with ads all over google? I wonder how much money he makes selling merchandise and milking the gullible fools.
Posted by: Glen Davidson | October 11, 2008 3:29 PM
Shorter: IDiots do not mean to ask questions, they intend only to assert their assumptions again and again. Everything subsequent to such nonsense has shown that assertion is their only goal.
What one should say is that life needs something like DNA in order to evolve, that is, something quite conservative, yet able to change randomly from time to time. The fact is that these two abilities were predicted via neo-Darwinism well before DNA was found, so in a sense (in some aspects, that is) properties of DNA were predicted by evolution/genetics.
The mere fact that a code is needed for life indicates that life would have a code if it exists. Once the code is found, one has to look to see what the causes behind the coded information are. And these causes do not differ meaningfully from what is predicted of random mutation and natural selection, plus a few other factors.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
Posted by: Rey Fox | October 11, 2008 3:33 PM
"Requires one to make an interdisciplinary synthesis of all the information available in the world."
And a metric assload of crack cocaine, apparently.
Posted by: Louise Van Court | October 11, 2008 3:34 PM
Quoting Another Primate #27.
"I've had it! There is no reasoning with these people. They are fuck tards and I can't take it any more. Let's get all of us atheist and agnostics together and liquidate all of our possessions to buy our own island somewhere."
Not to minimize your apparent anger and frustration but I have had the same thought recently but with a different slant. If all the atheists and like-minded agnostics lived on their own island together I think you would still be annoyed, ticked-off, and frustrated much of the time. It wouldn't be the utopia you imagine. You are letting people irk you.
So what, that some people think differently than you do and you can't change their minds. It is wonderful that we do not all think alike because collectively we can solve problems that one person alone never could.
Posted by: raven | October 11, 2008 4:09 PM
Actually millions of people saw this crisis coming a year ago including many or most economists. Also myself who took appropriate measures in the 401K plan over a year ago. Tens of millions saw it coming months ago in the USA alone. Hank Paulson, the treasury secretary and Bernanke the fed guy saw it coming two weeks ago. Bush is still trying to figure it out.
This was a failure of leadership, mostly the GOP's fault although the Dems didn't help anything.
Your points go downhill from there.
Posted by: RBH | October 11, 2008 4:12 PM
Several years ago there was an interminable thread on IIDB with Marshall, second in length only to the infamous "Ed Thread," in which Marshall basically ignored every critique. He has latched onto the analogy described in PZ's OP, holding to it like grim death, and will never understand that analogies are not evidence.
Posted by: JD | October 11, 2008 4:18 PM
Are you not paying attention? As I stated the word code has different meanings. There is not a single one that covers every context. Dictionary.com lists FIFTEEN different meanings for the word code.Of those, only the last one applies to DNA:
IOW (as I stated previously) "a specific input to a specific output. "Marshall's use of the word code in his argument most certainly does "imply a message and a sentient generator" In fact, that is what his argument is all about. It fails, however, in that it equivocates the different meanings of the word code. DNA is not arbitrary nor is it at all like the use of code to describe software or language. From The Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions, whose aim is to develop and promote standards for information and communications technologies, the word code is defined as:
The genetic code could be described by definition #4, but clearly not by other definitions. For example, software or language could be described by definition #2, but DNA couldn't.
No apparently, like the IDiots, you wish to make up your own definitions or usurp the standard meanings of well defined words.
If you believe DNA is a code like software, then please show us how the completely physical process of
DNA --> mRNA --> protein that is completely contained in the physical layer is REQUIRED to be abstracted at higher levels the way ALL software is. Also, if DNA is a code like software why isn't table salt or water also information containing codes? Or are you claiming all chemicals are really analogous to software?
Marshall argument (and yours) fails because he either doesn't realize or understand that the term "code" has different meanings in different contexts or he does know, but deliberately equivocates them.
Posted by: j | October 11, 2008 4:28 PM
I'd say JD is right. the difference between the way science uses "code" and the way it's used colloquially is the same issue as "theory" and "theory". they blorr the distinctions to make a point
In the scientific sense, there's no symbolic information. the information is stored withing a small set of transcribable building-blocks. the information directly derives from the physical, chemical composition and combination of the building-blocks.
In the colloquial sense, "code" is a form of encryption. the building blocks are inherently meaningless and useless, and can be substituted by ANYTHING, in ANY combination. the meaning is mounted onto them symbolically.
symbolical coding requires a mind usually (though i suppose the randomly generated computer language from an earlier post disproves even that), and THAT is why they argue that DNA needed a mind that imbued it with its meaning. They're wrong, because DNA coding isn't symbolic at all.
Posted by: JD | October 11, 2008 4:37 PM
Yes, it's a similar situation. When scientist say "genetic code" they mean it in a very specific sense of the word (input maps output). And just like with the word "theory," context is everything.
Posted by: Jadehawk | October 11, 2008 4:45 PM
and to make a human-scale comparison for the way DNA transmits information:
a non-symbolic way of getting "hot" across would be to pour boiling water on your hand. I could make the same point in a few other ways (stab you with a hot poker, hold your hand into a fire...), but the number of substitutions possible is limited by the physical attributes of the medium. pouring cold water over your hand will NOT convey "hot" to you.
that's how DNA transfers meaning. language on the other hand doesn't need to burn you to transfer the meaning of "hot", because it's an agreed upon, symbolic representation.
Posted by: Tulse | October 11, 2008 4:47 PM
It's the fundamentalists who are causing problems, in case you didn't notice.
Posted by: R.C. Moore | October 11, 2008 4:57 PM
In the battle between JD and Brain Hertz, I am siding with JD at this point. I find the analogy of DNA to code (as used by Marshall) to be tortured. If DNA is code, when do we know information has been encoded vs. a random string of nonsense? It is not like someone watches the various transcriptions and says at some point "Aha! now we are getting somewhere -- we have a membrane!".
In all cases for real codes, their is a distinguishing point by some entity at which random noise gives way to meaning, and therefore information. DNA does have the property of persistence of certain randomly produced sequences, but this is an attribute of the underlying chemistry involved. Languages and codes retain information because the arrangement of symbols has a useful meaning outside the language itself. DNA has no external meaning that I know of.
Posted by: WhenDanSaysJump | October 11, 2008 4:57 PM
"Michael is a raelian..."
Damn.
I had my money on Michael being either Gene Ray or Sollog.
Posted by: Eric Paulsen | October 11, 2008 4:57 PM
1. Bozo the clowns nose is red.
2. Red is the color of fire.
3. Fire is a tool of the devil.
Therefore it is a well known fact that Bozos nose is evil incarnate.
Posted by: David Marjanović, OM | October 11, 2008 5:10 PM
Comment 63 nails it.
Who is Sollog?
Posted by: Pyesetz the Dog | October 11, 2008 5:15 PM
This would be a reasonable syllogism (but proving far less than the creationists want it to), except for the change of "come from" in point 2 to "designed" in point 3. That is the unwarranted leap! A mind that creates a language string need not be conscious, such as the "hive mind" that creates the dances of bees.
With point 3 corrected, this syllogism is basically just the Gaia Hypothesis, that it is useful to think of the entire biosphere as a meta-organism where DNA mutations constitute Gaia's "thoughts". In no way does it prove that it is even useful to think of the universe as being ruled by a bearded guy sitting on a throne in the clouds. Fail, as usual.
Posted by: hje | October 11, 2008 5:29 PM
The Ken Ham School of Logic/Business Plan:
Phase 1. Spout creationist nonsense.
Phase 2. ???
Phase 3. Profit. Get it?
Posted by: BMurray | October 11, 2008 5:33 PM
This argument is bad enough without mischaracterising it as you have, PZ. They are not saying the organism with DNA must have a mind but that DNA, as a message, must be the product of a mind (presumably God's). Nothing in the argument requires attributing intelligence to cockroaches (or even creationists), making most of your post just look foolish.
Not quite as foolish as what you mock, mind you, but still very weak indeed. You've done better. Your blog is increasingly proof that passionately opposing sides will eventually meet in the middle -- a ground that is still pretty stupid. You should raise your standards.
Posted by: James F | October 11, 2008 5:35 PM
Eric Paulsen @67 wrote:
Hmm, you might be on to something....
Posted by: Tyler DiPietro | October 11, 2008 5:51 PM
JD has already touched upon this point, but it warrants amplification: if all things that map specific inputs to specific outputs are considered "codes", you could similarly reduce just about any physical phenomena. This is what has lead to Wolframian confusions about the laws of physics being "computational" or computation "underlying" physics.
Posted by: Scott Hatfield, OM | October 11, 2008 5:53 PM
Actually, DNA is a coding system, and (as Conway-Morris points out) one that approaches, but falls just short of, optimization in terms of efficiency and reliability. It is possible to imagine codes that are more efficient at storing information and which are less prone to errors, but such would be a vanishingly small portion of the set of all possible codes.
And, since evolution actually requires variation, it may well be that the code we have strikes just the right 'Goldilocks' balance between reliability and the occasional novel variant to make evolution likely to occur. If the code was a little more reliable, there would be much less variation in populations due to the lowered mutation rate, decreasing the likelihood of fortuitous variation being present within populations in a changing environment, which would have the effect of stymieing natural selection. Conversely, if the process was a little bit less efficient or less reliable, populations would become swamped with deleterious mutations, and again this would tend to keep populations small in terms of both genetic diversity and absolute size, and again selection would tend to be hindered.
So, to that extent one might say that the code we observe does appear to be optimized ('fine-tuned') for life. Narrowly considered, Marshall's initial premise is worthy of our attention in the same way that the value of the fine-structure constant or the charge of an electron is worthy of our attention. It is worth asking why they have the values or parameters that they do!
Where Marshall's argument fails, however, is in the second premise, which is the leap to a conscious agency. The fact that DNA is relatively optimal compared to other possible codes as a basis for an evolving system does not constitute evidence for its design per se. There is no reason to believe that natural causes can not be evoked for any proximal explanation of the code's properties, if it can be shown that other possible codes would be less optimal than the one we see....and in fact, it is a relatively simple matter to show why this is so.
It would've been nice to see a discussion of this point at the 'Origins' conference I attended last weekend at Cal Tech, but abiogenesis only received a gloss in just one of the wide-ranging lectures, of which I hope to start posting soon.
Posted by: tguy | October 11, 2008 5:54 PM