Recently I read a book by Stephen Meyer; it featured an argument for intelligent design that I had never heard before, which I will now relay to you so you may attempt to refute or add to it how you wish. So, say that you text your friend, what happens? Your friend sees your text right? However, he does not receive any kind of matter from you. None of the keys pressed are sent, nor the phone, not even the air you breathe while typing. What your friend will get is information. No matter ever travels across the phone wires. So then, what is information if it has no tie to matter? If you recieve a text, you know that some form of intelligence wrote it, same with a paper, book, computer program, etc.. Information is created by some form of intelligence. Now, there is observational information, such as me observing a ball falling, I get information that it fell without me receiving it directly from another intelligent source. I'll get to that later. If information has no tie to physical forms, and only something alive can gain it (Can a rock gather information?), what is information? I say it is thought. Information is THOUGHT. Physical mediums are obviously needed to convey thought, but they are no more a thought themselves than air, water and etc. are light when light travels through them. Our thoughts can be influenced from the world around us (observational information) easily. We see a rock fall, the thought or memory of the rock falling is in our head then, and we can send that thought be text or voice or some other medium. Checkpoint one: Information is thought, needs an original thinker, and has no tie to physical elements. If you dispute, dispute "checkpoint one". ------------------------------------------ Now on to DNA: What is it? DNA is a code, instructions on how to construct certain proteins within the body, and information about your traits and body. Well, DNA is the medium and genes are the information. How do you explain that? A code, instruction manual inside everything that moves or thinks?
Nah, you have heard this argument before, I guarantee it. Its just a variation of the complexity argument. The writer is saying that DNA is like a set of information for the cell, and since all man made information has a creator, therefore DNA has a creator. I'm sure you've heard the exact same argument applied to the eye(the eye has a lens just like a camera! Cameras have designers, therefore eyes have a designer!) and a number of other biological structures that resemble man made objects. The fallacy is ignoring the explanatory power of evolution in the apparent design of these structures and jumping straight to it looks designed, therefore it is designed.
DNA = Genetic code which is unique to individuals and species. It is generaly made up of dominant and recessive genes. Dominant genes are found are the ones shown on the outside of a current organism. Recessive genes can come out on current animals but are usualy found in ancestores of older organism. As an organism evolves and the enviroments it lives in change old genes can switch on and new ones can shut off deppending on a set of variables. Information can be anything you want it to be Its subjective but is still there even if theres a lack of thought. The most basic forms of life like cnidarians[jelly fish] use genetic information to function they do not have any form of thought with the lack of a brian. They can move, eat ,see, reproduce,and live normal lives with out thought. They store information about how to live instinctualy through genetic codes and these genetics are passed down through the future generations. Information=/= equal thought or require it. Information did not need an "original thinker" since information and or life does not need inteligence to function or to be created. Information can be made and used without thought.
i think a better term is coding rather than information. you cells are coded to specialise to be a certain type of cell, it doesnt have a brain but it has a core where the coding is stored
1. You're not understanding the point. This is different from that argument. Taking a suggestion, coding is what I mean as information. CODING requires thought; DNA is CODING. 2. (for another guy) Yes, organisms can (seemingly) live without thought, but how do we (scientifically, which is how I propose the argument) that they do not think? Even if they didn't think though, how do we know DNA isn't thinking for it, guiding it's every decisioning, working like a program with billions of "IF" statements?
It's a very 3-dimentional way of thinking; that every word we create must have a physical representation or accurate definition. Perhaps the word information has vague boundries? The idea of interpreting something as 'information' could be opionated. Also, you say that a rock cannot contain information, because it is not living. But a rock will have chemical, atomic and visual properties that could indicate its age, location of origin, material etc. That is information, but does the word information really require such accurate boundries in it's definition? I study Physics so i could also interpret the DNA arguement into the atomic structure of all materials around us, including us. Like DNA, the atoms serve almost as the 'manual' for whatever it creates, and even the slightest change can make a dramatic difference to it's finished product. Take Carbon. Carbon has 1 fewer Proton, and 1 fewer Neutron than the gas Nitrogen. Now these two materials are completely different, on almost all levels. They have different properties in a range of environments, including high pressures, extreme temperatures or in the presence of an electrostatic field. My point is, even though you may infer that there is some sort of code in DNA, but i think of it more as an arrangement, and because DNA is so basic in the human structure, it makes the most dramatic difference, like atoms to materials. If i interpreted it wrong, please let me know.
I think what you don't realize is that your comparison of information like in a computer to DNA is completely wrong. All DNA is composed of repeating building blocks called nucleotides connected by a hydrogen bond, phosphate groups and deoxyribose sugars. How it is arranged is based off of how the parents' DNA was arranged. There is no information.
This thread is a steaming pile of ****. Despite everyone completely misunderstanding the point the OP was trying to make you actually managed to confuse the topic creator with enough verbiage to where he responded (incorrectly I might add) to a post that has nothing to do with what he was arguing for! This whole thread is about a texting analogy for information in DNA. Information is communicated by physical change. Texts are delivered via a signal that is sent from a phone (similar to that of a radio transmitting information through radio waves), decrypted by a tower that then either sends it to another tower that will repeat the process in reverse to deliver it to the recipient or use a ground based telephone line which converts the information into traveling electricity (or in the case of fiber-optics - light). So no, cellphones do not transmit information magically to each other. Very real physical changes occur within the medium of matter and energy. Your analogy is void, therefore the argument against DNA is as well. Thread over. No really, this isn't one of those "I'm so cool I answered right now all have to stfu!!!" this is basic 2+2 = 4. You cannot add anything more to this and there is no way to falsify it. Information is physical and is transmitted physically. This is a piss poor thread created by some drone who read a piss poor book by a man who profits from his willing ignorance on every subject that has any meaning to science and the progression of technology.
^ Have a coke and a smile and stfu. Kind of my point, but yea i agree. Information is something we interpret from what we see. In the same way we have distinguished letters and numbers from seemingly useless symbols and marks. We see what makes DNA, and we categorize it, making it a form of information.
Learn to read, understand and then respond. Don't lead the thread into a tangent, which is the tragedy of almost every debate thread on this site. No, it was. He used the cellphone ANALOGY (not metaphor) to liken information to something nonexistent and intelligent and that therefore DNA must be the same. If you show the analogy to be false the rest of the argument is as well. But you are correct he did state that information requires intelligence which I did neglect to answer fully. When I say information is physical it means everything is information. Rocks, diamonds and crystals are information and freely form without intelligence. Information, therefore, does not in all case require intelligence.
This is false, so your following argument is false. Information is tied to physical forms, because if it was not, we would not be able to perceive it.
I read the name Stephanie Meyer, then just stopped for a second. Isn't that the same lady who wrote Twilight? I'm done here, especially since Nitrous arrived; can't beat that guy in a debate or whatever this thread has become. EDIT: Nevermind, it's Stephen Meyer xD
The cell phone wasn't an analogy, it was to show that while information may have a medium, it doesn't need physical material. Try faxing instead if you will, or the fact that a hard drive with info weighs the same as it does without, etc.. (Bytes rearrange, we know, bring it up, I dare you)
Somebody's cocky, aren't you? You didn't show that information doesn't need physical material. You showed that transmitting information does not require the sending of material. Then you jumped from there to information is thought. Nitrous showed you that information is an arrangement of matter and energy, and thus the whole cell phone analogy is wrong. Besides, like I said before, this is just another tired use of the complexity/design argument. X naturally occuring thing looks like Y man-made thing, and Y was designed by humans, therefore X was designed by God. The argument fails, whether it is applied to DNA looking like computer data(your cell phone analogy), or applied to the bacterial flagellum looking like a manmade motor, or applied to the eye looking like a camera lens.
ok, to wrap all the mistakes with the ideas conveyed in the OP - information isnt tied to physical forms if you interpret it scientifically, but such are these kind of philosophical pieces of wank that have covers and blurbs etc., The idea put forward that information has no physical tie is completely misguided. if information just spew out a hole in time and space, then ol' stevie meyer might be on to something. Even so, that information had to come from somewhere, so there is physical interaction. physical ties are far more complex than you seeing, hearing or feeling prescence. simbly, observation is all the interaction that makes a physical tie. quantum mechanically (sorry). despite you and you friend not having contact with each other (inferred from your senses) you are interacting! so the idea that is used to bring forward intelligent design is flawed, trying to contradict science with science doesnt pan out. the idea is a philoso-scientific concept