From: {$to$}@meden.demon.co.uk   
      
   On 13/12/2025 13:46, MarkE wrote:   
   > 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   
      
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