OK, here's the thing. Some people might be extremely surprised by this post. For one thing, I've always come down on the side of a causeless universe. In actuality, I've always argued against the logic people have used to support a cause, and, to be more precise, a creator.
For another thing, I have sometimes called myself an atheist. But when time permitted, I made it clear I'm only what I call a practical atheist. Meaning no beliefs in any god/religion/whatever influences any decisions I make in any aspect of life. In truth, I'm more an agnostic. I've never thought there was reason to believe one way or the other on the issue of whether there is/was a creator.
However, there is something that I am forced to accept as evidence for a creator. Now that Prebe is with us, and I just found out Xar is in the same field (genetics), maybe I'll be exposed to knowledge that changes my mind. After all, everything I say below is based on very little education on the topic. Any actual facts would be great. But I can't imagine what fossil records exist of this stuff.
I'm not terribly concerned with believing one way or another. And, of course, believing there's a creator isn't remotely the same as believing in any specific creator or g/God. But I wouldn't mind falling off the fence. And it's a fun topic in any event.
OK, let's take the long road...
There's the old argument about watches that believers use. If you see a working watch, you don't assume it is the result of random chance. It is too complicated to have come about that way, and the natural assumption is that the watch was intentionally made. And just as it would be foolish to argue against that thought, it is foolish to argue against the thought that the universe, which is immeasurably more complex than any watch, was also intentionally made.
However, this argument is flawed. The reason we believe any watch we see was intentionally made is the fact that people make watches. Any of us can go to a factory or watch-maker and observe the construction of any number of watches. To that we can add the fact that nobody has ever seen a watch come into existence through means other than human intent. All in all, not much faith is needed to believe the assumption that any watch we find was intentionally constructed.
None of which can be said about the universe. Nobody saw it come into being, so nobody can claim first-hand knowledge of whether or not any intent was behind it. We can only observe this one universe, and the existence of others is, at best, hypothetical. That being the case, we obviously don't know that one or more others were intentionally created, and, so, can't say anything like, "Well, since all those other universes were intentionally created, it's not illogical to assume ours was, too."
So now to what this post and thread are actually about!
This post is from a year and a half ago:Am I making my point clearly? DNA is not merely Sagan's required information; it is a information system. One quite beyond anything we have come up with. We are aware of many many information systems. All but one was intentionally created by humans. I do not think it illogical to assume that the only one NOT designed by us, the one that is so far beyond any of ours, was, nevertheless, designed.Fist and Faith wrote:In Does God Exist? The Debate Between Theists & Atheists, J.P. Moreland says this:
"In biology, scientists have discovered that DNA molecules do not merely contain redundant order, but they contain what they call information. They say that DNA can be transcribed into RNA, and RNA can be translated into protein. Now Carl Sagan, and this is one of the few times I agree with him, has made certain claims about the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, called SETI. According to Sagan, in that search all we need to do is find one message with information in it from outer space, and we will be able to recognize the presence of intelligence. We don't even need to be able to translate it; it is the presence of information instead of order that will tip us off to the presence of intelligence. Well, what is sauce for the artificial goose ought to be sauce for the DNA gander, and I argue that the information in DNA molecules is evidence of intelligence behind it."
Humans have made many information systems. Language itself is one. Books and computers are biggies too. Information systems refer to things outside themselves. Languages do not merely talk about language. That wouldn't make for much of a conversation. They refer to things outside themselves. Anything, in fact.
Nature does not have information systems. There are many things in nature that have structure and patterns. Snowflakes, for example. Sedimentary rocks, pulsars, the shapes of galaxies, etc., etc. But none of these things are information systems. Not only do they not refer to anything outside of themselves, they don't even refer to themselves. They are just patterns and structures.
Except... DNA is an information system. The only one that we have ever found that was not created by us. It is more than a pretty double-helix. It is not only an information system, but it is one that we could never dream of making. It contains the information to build the body of whatever the organism in question is, even the simplest of which are extremely complicated, from a molecular chemist's point of view. Proteins and amino acids build the tiny, but intricate parts of the cell. We could never come up with a system that is such a complicated blueprint, a blueprint that is also the builder of these incredibly complicated things, allows them to reproduce, and always have offspring that are different from the parents. We're nowhere near that clever, and I don't see that the possibility of uncountable accidents is an iron-clad explanation. Nature is not so filled with other information systems that we can say, "Oh, DNA? That's just another random occurrence."
Murrin's reply to that post was:
Sorry I never replied to you, Murrin. But it's be a big topic, I had just moved away from my family, and... Anyway, there are two things that bother me about your answer. First, there is lots of speculation involved. Its starting point is, "Let's assume there was no intelligence behind life's origin," and tries to figure out a possible scenario. Not that I have a problem with that starting point. In a sense, there are only two possible starting points, and there's no need to ignore this one. But nobody saw the first long organic molecules, and so can't say where or how they formed. I recently told The Esmer, "In our current discussion, an axiom for me is that order and structure do not need to be designed, while an axiom for you is that they do." Well, it seems that another axiom for me is that an information system needs to be designed.Murrin wrote:I'll try and respond to all that, but one of the reasons I don't post in these topics often is that I'm not very good at expressing my thoughts on this sort of thing... I'm not entirely sure if this really answers what you are saying, but its as close as I can think of other than just saying 'its perfectly possible through chance'.
The first long organic molecules formed in warm, chemically rich spots near the sea beds, where chemicals would form into complex molecules when exposed to heat - apparently the structures make the transference of extra energy from heat (such as in areas of volcanic activity, prime suspects for the location of the first life) more efficient. These structures occured many times, in many combinations, and some work better than others - the ones less effective at transferring energy break down when exposed to too much energy. But, the process meant there were many different combinations of hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, phosphorous, etc, present. Chemical properties of these elements meant they were always going to form in certain patterns, so the odds are good that long chain molecules will occur.
Here I am also going to throw in this: www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99993778
Recent evidence suggests that UV light from the sun actually made long chains of RNA more likely to form than other molecules. From there, it is all a chemical equivalent of natural selection. Every possible combination will have occured at some point - similar molecules with slightly different chemical properties. Some won't have lasted, some will have. Evolution takes care of the refinements.
If evolution is accepted as fact, then from the first strands of RNA formed, the complex DNA we have today is perfectly explicable.
Of course, if you return now to the statement about it being chance - that is not strictly true, based on the arguments above. The correct elements in the correct conditions do not have as large a number of possible formations as may be thought. The 'chance' is actually limited by many factors to the point where complex life becomes inevitable, rather than just probable.
Interestingly, this is also an argument for the possible abundance of extra-terrestrial life. In any place with very similar conditions, life is inevitable. Even if it doesn't last for long.
My second problem takes this into abiogenesis. In 1952, Stanley Miller figured out how to make amino acids using the chemicals and conditions that we might assume were present on primordial Earth. Great news, eh? Certainly a step in the direction you're trying to get. But there are difficulties and difficulties. Could all of the necessary amino acids have been present in the same place at the same time, or would some of them have needed different circumstances to come into existence? What conditions are needed for the amino acids to form proteins, and are those conditions likely to have presented themselves? My biggest question is: Why can't anyone, anywhere, under any conditions, stacking the deck as much in their favor as they want, make life from amino acids, protein, or any building blocks, basic or advanced? People have been trying to do so since people have existed, using any means possible. Even if it wasn't until Miller's time that there was any possibility of doing so from the ground up, it's been more than 50 years since then, and I'm not even asking people to start from the ground. Start with any building materials, with conditions that are considered more favorable than those that are thought to have existed on primordial Earth.
But your explanation says that all of the proper conditions presented themselves at the same time so that all of the necessary amino acids could form; join into proteins; the proteins could join into DNA; that specific DNA contained everything necessary to start the process of evolution. That is, it grew the body of the first life form. This means it could manufacture:
-some equivalent of a cell membrane
-a system for taking in energy
-a reproductive system (Which is why it had to manufacture its own cell membrane. If a strand of DNA happened to be swallowed by something like a cell membrane, would the reproductive system built by the strand have included the ability to reproduce the membrane?)
This is all too much for me. Unless there is reason to believe things happened in a much different way than all that - and, by "reason," I mean evidence - it's just too much for me.
*dons flame-retardant gear and ducks for cover*
)
). Yet the Ultimate Ancestor operated at the instructions of an information system the likes of which we can't come close to at our current levels of technology.