[questor]

some interesting information for DNA lovers.

A: Francis Crick received the Nobel prize for discovering DNA. The following is from the first paragraph of Francis Crick's Nobel lecture on October 11, 1962. Note his use of the word "code" and "information," emphasis mine:

"Part of the work covered by the Nobel citation, that on the structure and replication of DNA, has been described by Wilkins in his Nobel Lecture this year... I shall discuss here the present state of a related problem in information transfer in living material - that of the genetic CODE - which has long interested me, and on which my colleagues and I, among many others, have recently been doing some experimental work..."

The following quotes are from atheist Richard Dawkins' book The Blind Watchmaker:

"Every single one of more than a trillion cells in the body contains about a thousand times as much precisely-coded digital information as my entire computer.

"Each nucleus, as we shall see in Chapter 5, contains a digitally coded database larger, in information content, than all 30 volumes of the Encyclopaedia Britannica put together. And this figure is for each cell, not all the cells of a body put together."

Having quoted Dawkins here, it's interesting to note that neither he, nor any materialist has ever provided any scientific (i.e. empirical, testable, falsifiable) explanation for the origin of information. For a very interesting and extensive read on this subject, read "The Problem of Information For The Theory of Evolution" by Royal Truman. If you carefully trace every reference and rebuttal to this article on the internet, you'll discover that not one person has ever supplied a scientific response to the questions raised here, nor provided any examples of materialistic processes that produce coded information.

No naturally occuring molcule possesses the properties of information. Nature does not produce any kind of code, encoding/decoding mechanism or symbolic relationships at all; everything in nature represents only itself.

DNA, on the other hand, represents a complete plan for a living organism. DNA is an encoding / decoding mechanism that contains code, or language, representing the organism.

article from the internet.

[Fishteacher73]

While DNA may be a code, it in itself is not really information. Just as an alphabet is a code, the information is the combined result of the letters and not really intrinsic upon the code itself. Just as Cyrillic and Greek alphabets differ, they can still impart pretty much the same information. The fact that there is a code is really unimorptant, IMO. DNA is nothing more than the letters.

[questor]

DNA is the director of replication. it tells what kind, how much, how long, which way and all other commands that make our bodies the way they are. what would you call this ,if not information ? the information may be coded, but the cells receive it, understand it, and obey it.

[HydrogenBond]

The DNA is a template type molecule from which every protein that makes up a cell or multicellullar lifeform can be derived ,via mRNA, etc.. But it is not easy to make a viable cell starting with the DNA alone. Most cells don't even use the entire DNA except during DNA duplication. If one started with DNA and made all the possible proteins along its length, one would have a lot of protein but not a viable cell.

This observation tells us that there is also some sort of analogous memory capacitance within all the rest of the (daughter) cell, which helps differntiate and regulate the DNA to the needs of the cell. The DNA is sort of like a salad bar with all the ingredients. The rest of the cell in conjunction with the effects of the environment will help put together plates of DNA salad bar combinations.

[learnin to learn]

protien can be made from DNA?? I thought that protiens where made from RNA and ribosomes...

[joel]

>>No naturally occuring molcule possesses the properties of information

The first thing I would point to in response to this statement would be DNA. Are you saying that DNA is not natural? What evidence do you have of that?

Information storage (if you want to call it that) in DNA is fascinating, whether natural or not. Cheers!

[Vending]

Originally Posted by questor

A: Francis Crick received the Nobel prize for discovering DNA.

This may be to minor to mention, but I belive that Crick won his prize for discovering the structure of DNA. DNA had already been discovered and was already belived to be responsible for the heredity of traits. Watson and Crick (and others) just merely provided a structure and, hence, a probable mechanism for heredity and replication.

No naturally occuring molcule possesses the properties of information.

THis is a completely fasle statement. In fact, quite the opposite is true. EVERY molecule in nature posesses information. I think that your statement relies on a misunderstanding of the word "information." Information is, simply put, structure beyond that expected for a completely random process. If there is any order in a system, then information about that system can be extracted.

For instance, take the molecule Methane (CH4). What does this molecule tell us? Well, at the very least it tells us that there is one carbon and four hydrogens present per atom -- such structure requires some degree of order. Thus, if we had a system entirely composed of methane, we would know that it is roughly 1/4 hydrogen by weight and 3/4 carbon. Also, we know that in the timescale that we observe it, if it does not change to another chemical, that methane must be either kenetically or thermodynamically favored. And so on.

In the same vein, DNA contains structure. This stucture (as it is not completely random) MUST contain information. How the cell "chooses" to utalize this structure is its own decision. However, the information is there to be exploited.

The interesting thing from all this is that it is not the information in DNA that is so important/cool. All molecules contain information. Rather, it is the ability of DNA to impose its order on the system around it (ie. one strand of DNA can use the order of its primary structure to impose both secondary, tertiary, and quatenary structure upon both itself and another peice of DNA -- we call the usual results double stranded, double helixed DNA). It is this ablity that allows for DNA to replicate and, thus, allows for it to serve as the source for heridety of genes.

I think that is about it. Any claim that moleucles do not contain information must stem from an incorrect (scientifically) use of the word information. Perhaps this is not what you ment, however. If so, would you mind providing a more strict definition of the way you ment to use information? That way, perhaps, I can adress your points more directly.

Cool

[Boerseun]

Ooooohhhh...

I see fertile soil for another endless Intelligent Design debate!

Before we spiral down that route, can this serve as a *very* early warning to stick to the topic?

I know, I know - I'm being incredibly anal right now, stomping down heavily on transgressions yet to materialize. But believe me, as the old-timers here will attest, I don't want to have to move a potentially promising thread to the dungeons of neverending repetitive circular arguments and false analogies.

If you do want to contribute to an ID debate, however, go and look it up under the "Theology" forums.

Thanks, and thanks also for letting me be a pain in the butt.

Boerseun

[Edge]

DNA is quite interesting. You can find lots of info in there.

Scientists are just trying to explain the "junk DNA", though.

[TRoutMac]

Originally Posted by Boerseun

Before we spiral down that route, can this serve as a *very* early warning to stick to the topic?

Looks like the topic is DNA and Information. You're the one that brought up Intelligent Design. A freudian slip, I would think.

Originally Posted by Boerseun

I don't want to have to move a potentially promising thread to the dungeons of neverending repetitive circular arguments and false analogies.

Yeah, you're right. Who wants to be subjected to the truth anyway?It's so boring.

Originally Posted by Boerseun

If you do want to contribute to an ID debate, however, go and look it up under the "Theology" forums.

Wait a minute… since when does Intelligent Design belong in the "Theology" forum? In a recent discussion in the Theology forum, Infamous was suggesting we move the Intelligent Design thread to some other forum because it doesn't belong in the "Theology" forum.

Of course, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see what's going on here… it's the same tired, worn-out cliché that Intelligent Design isn't science, so let's push it off into some nebulous fantasy land forum where we don't have to confront it.

I gotta hand it to you, you guys are persistent. Persistently wrong, but persistent.