[Pyrotex]

Originally Posted by TRoutMac

Who cares? You may as well ask us what kind of ice cream we like, for all the relevance it has to the subject. What, now "legitimate science" to you must include fortune-telling?...

The ability to demonstrate that a theory has "prediction value" is at the very heart of science. "Predictive value" is totally relevant to the subject.

...I.D. could be disproven, or at least "non-supported", if no similarities could be found between the things that humans with intelligence produce and the systems which are found in living organisms.

Science is not based on "similarities". Similarity is a subjective quality. I can show you similarities between the New Testament and Aesop's Fables. So what?

...I can fully understand why Darwinists wish to pretend we've never answered this question....We know quite a bit about this [DNA]…Man is intelligent, these are things intelligence produces, and within the living cell we find precisely the same thing (albeit in a different form)....

No, actually you can't understand the "darwinist" point of view or you wouldn't be so dogmatic. So, your "logic" goes like this: Man is intelligent and he uses languages to describe things; DNA is a language and describes things; therefore DNA is evidence for an intelligent language-user. Is that fair?

The weak link in this "logic" is that you call DNA a "language"; that word necessarily implies intelligence, so you have circular logic. You are assuming the very thing you wish to demonstrate when you call DNA a "language".

DNA is a molecule. Let's get very careful about our wording here, so we can avoid fallacies. DNA is Deoxy Ribonucleic Acid. Molecules form all the time, everywhere in the universe. DNA forms all the time, at least on Earth. DNA is NOT a "transmitted language", ie, a means of sentient-to-sentient communication. It is NOT a "transcribed language", ie, a means of recording arbitrary information. It IS a language only in the sense that it provides a sequence of datapoints that control a natural process. We call this process, "reproduction".

In other words, DNA is <<data>>. It is information that has been biologically encoded at a molecular level. This is not a unique phenomenon. Trees record data in their tree rings. Humans are able to decode huge amounts of climatological and ecosystem data from measuring tree rings. Does this mean that trees are intelligent?

Living (and non-living) systems often leave encoded information behind. Sometimes it is chemical, sometimes fossilized, sometimes encoded in physical patterns. Atoms contain information in the configuration of their electrons. Galaxies contain information in their shapes and spectra.

If DNA were like "letters" written in an "ink" on sheepskins or paper, it would be obvious that we have an "artificed" language. But we can watch under the microscope and see RNA strands from two parents combine into a DNA molecule, which IF inserted into the right bio-chemical environment, will control the process of reproduction. This is all chemistry. Atoms hanging onto each other, atoms colliding, energy levels, electron exchanges--all natural chemistry which goes on all the time. Neither the sources nor the recipients of this chemical "code" are sentient--they are as mindless as a virus, a fleck of algae, a drop of rain.

The problem of the origin of DNA is very complicated and we have not answered it yet. I grant you that. But all that means is: we have not answered it yet. It is a mystery. I grant you that. But that cannot be MADE to mean that Divine Intervention is involved.

Do you know how much change I have in my pocket? No? It's a mystery, yes? Does that mean that Divine Intervention put it in my pocket?