From: me22over7@gmail.com   
      
   On 11/12/2025 12:03 am, Ernest Major wrote:   
   > On 06/12/2025 07:19, MarkE wrote:   
   >> On 20/11/2025 11:07 pm, Ernest Major wrote:   
   >>> On 19/11/2025 11:00, MarkE wrote:   
   >>>>   
   >>>> However, if I understand Meyer's claim, he's saying that the base-   
   >>>> pair sequences in DNA are not physio-chemically determined, but   
   >>>> rather DNA is a neutral substrate for storing an arbitrary,   
   >>>> immaterial code. (In the same way, different sequences of 0s and 1s   
   >>>> on your hard drive have essentially the same mass and energy, and   
   >>>> are therefore not "physical" in that sense.)   
   >   
   > The genetic code is arbitrary, in that any mapping from codon to   
   > aminoacyl residue would work. Variant mappings exist in nature, mostly   
   > in clades with small genomes (often mitochondria), and have been created   
   > experimentally. For more divergent mappings there is the strategy of   
   > swapping the mRNA and amino acid binding domains of tRNA.   
   >   
   > But the genetic code is not random (it's more robust against base   
   > substitutions than the great majority of possible code) and may be in   
   > part physio-chemically determined. There is a hypothesis that originally   
   > direct interactions between RNA and amino acids were involved in   
   > template directed peptide synthesis, and that these interactions are   
   > fossilised in the genetic code.   
   >>>>   
   >>>> However, evolution is claimed to be a non-mind process that   
   >>>> accumulates particular code sequences, i.e. information. Even if   
   >>>> Meyer's assertion that "Information is a massless, immaterial   
   >>>> entity" is accepted, he still needs to show why evolution (even in-   
   >>>> principal) cannot be a source of such information.   
   >>>   
   >>> There are different views as to what the information in DNA is. On   
   >>> the one hand one can take an infomatics viewpoint and use the   
   >>> Kolmogorov complexity as a measure of the amount of information   
   >>> present. On the other hand one could follow Dawkins and argue that   
   >>> natural selection impresses an incomplete record of the historical   
   >>> environment of ancestral populations on the genome of a species, and   
   >>> this is the information in the genome. Similarly phylogenetic   
   >>> bracketing can be used to infer with various degrees of confidence   
   >>> ancestral phenotypes, habitats and distributions - that's information   
   >>> extractable from clade pan-genomes.   
   >>>   
   >>> Meyer would seem to need a definition of information which can't be   
   >>> added by evolutionary processes, but yet still differs between taxa.   
   >>>   
   >>> If you stipulate that evolutionary processes don't change the   
   >>> information content of genomes, then as it is clear that evolutionary   
   >>> processes do change the DNA sequence of genomes, then one concludes,   
   >>> from the voluminous evidence for common descent with modification   
   >>> through the agency of natural selection and other processes, that all   
   >>> genomes have the same information content, and the claim that an   
   >>> intelligent designer is required to account for the information   
   >>> evaporates. (There might be a circular argument as a residue.)   
   >>>   
   >>> If one the other hand you accept that evolutionary processes do   
   >>> change the information content of genomes then you difficulty in   
   >>> justifying the need for a mind to act as the source of information.   
   >>> On the one hand you could resort to occasionalism (Islamo-Calvinist   
   >>> determinism) and deny the existence of natural processes, a la Ray   
   >>> Martinez (suspected of being an occasionalist evolutionist). On the   
   >>> other hand you could argue that the information is imported from the   
   >>> environment and a mind was needed to create the initial pool of   
   >>> information, in which case you're basically back at the Cosmological   
   >>> Argument. If, on the gripping hand, you assert this much and no more,   
   >>> you need to identify limits to how much can be achieved by   
   >>> evolutionary processes. If you don't, all you have is an appeal to   
   >>> incredulity.   
   >>>   
   >>   
   >> Apologies for the delay in this response.   
   >>   
   >> Within the ranks of ID, Behe (at least) accepts some degree of common   
   >> descent and therefore genome/information change. Although his recent   
   >> book Darwin Devolves has this blurb on Amazon:   
   >>   
   >> 'A system of natural selection acting on random mutation, evolution   
   >> can help make something look and act differently. But evolution never   
   >> creates something organically. Behe contends that Darwinism actually   
   >> works by a process of devolution―damaging cells in DNA in order to   
   >> create something new at the lowest biological levels. This is   
   >> important, he makes clear, because it shows the Darwinian process   
   >> cannot explain the creation of life itself. “A process that so easily   
   >> tears down sophisticated machinery is not one which will build   
   >> complex, functional systems,” he writes.'   
   >>   
   >> Would Progressive Creation (RTB) fit under occasionalism?   
   >   
   > No. Creationists sometimes try to argue that science excludes the   
   > supernatural as a matter of principle. Passing over the slippery nature   
   > of what counts as supernatural, I disagree. The actual restriction is to   
   > phenomena which behave, at least statistically, in a regular way, or to   
      
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