Coccyx - tale of a creationist disinformation post

[Ophiolite]

You can try to redefine and be as abstract about information and language as you wish, but the fact remains that cells replicate because they have both the machinery and the instruction to be able to do so.

The redefinition and abstraction is coming from you. You are mixing terms that have both very prescise technical meanings and vague colloquial meanings and a few in between. That is a recipe for misintrepretation, or - in a darker vein - for deliberate obfuscation. Are you trying to cloud the picture? If not, you'll cease this ill-informed line forthwith.

No one here is denying that DNA contains information (by some definitions). So what?

 

[HitchSlap]

Not fully

I have (although it's been some time).

- though I do know Dawkins' position and views regarding evolution, Christianity and creationists.

Then why deliberately misrepresent his views on DNA and gene transfer?

Here's the thing; real evolutionary biologists at some point included the word "information" regarding DNA as a hyperbolic way to describe how these nucleic acids follow specific chemical laws, not realizing, and quite frankly blithely unaware, of common creationists tactics. Creos jumped on this hyperbolic use of "information" and said, 'aha, DNA is information, and all information needs a coder - therefore god.' It's a blatant misrepresentation of a colloquial explanation.

 

[pitabread]

No, @PsychoSarah said in post #1047 that DNA does not contain information. Please read.

In context, her objection was characterizing DNA as a language in the same manner as one might characterize English or Spanish. DNA is not a language in that sense.

The problem is that written languages are often used as a metaphor for DNA typically to explain how DNA is structured. This can leads people to the false impression that they are one and the same, when they are not.

Going back to Gitt's definition of information

Gitt's definition is of questionable validity and to the best of my knowledge not used by anyone except creationist organizations. I wouldn't put too much stock in it.

 

[Speedwell]

I have (although it's been some time).

Then why deliberately misrepresent his views on DNA and gene transfer?

Here's the thing; real evolutionary biologists at some point included the word "information" regarding DNA as a hyperbolic way to describe how these nucleic acids follow specific chemical laws, not realizing, and quite frankly blithely unaware, of common creationists tactics. Creos jumped on this hyperbolic use of "information" and said, 'aha, DNA is information, and all information needs a coder - therefore god.' It's a blatant misrepresentation of a colloquial explanation.

Still, there is "information." Information Theory (I'm talking real Information Theory, not the Creationist version) provides a way of mathematically characterizing patterns in physical phenomena and the way they interact. Information, as a quantitative descriptor, is a statistical measure of the order in a physical system. No assertions whatever are made about "meaning" or "purpose." "Code" is another term which creationists misuse. In Information Theory coding is merely an orderly transform between one set of information and another. There is nothing in Information Theory about "mind" being required to produce information. In fact, the interacting stochastic processes which make up the biosphere contain enough information-generating capacity to fully account for the biological diversity we see around us.

 

[Astrophile]

If; however, once accepts that God exists and that God created everything, then one clearly sees His intelligence is beyond measure when they look through the microscope, the telescope, physical laws, a study of astronomy, etc...

if you can ask yourself, "If I believed God was real and true and accepted the above verses as speaking to qualities of His character and nature, would I believe God always was, and has always possessed all intelligence?"

These are very big 'ifs'.

 

[NobleMouse]

Why should I? You've already blown off Shannon and real Information Theory. But DNA and how it functions cannot satisfy Gitt's definition because it requires intention or purpose which has not been demonstrated in DNA.

See now how nice I am, giving you an opening for the next stage of the Discovery Institute's shell game: the confounding of purpose and function.

In the absence of a new definition, and any effort to demonstrate the definition I provided is incorrect and/or does not fit with the characteristics of DNA then I'll continue to use the definition I have sourced for information and will assume your interest in discussing further is no longer.

 

[NobleMouse]

The redefinition and abstraction is coming from you. You are mixing terms that have both very prescise technical meanings and vague colloquial meanings and a few in between. That is a recipe for misintrepretation, or - in a darker vein - for deliberate obfuscation. Are you trying to cloud the picture? If not, you'll cease this ill-informed line forthwith.

No one here is denying that DNA contains information (by some definitions). So what?

Hang on, you're the 2nd person to make this false claim now... @PsychoSarah wrote in post #1047 these words in response to my assertion that DNA contains information:

"Nope, because DNA doesn't have any information."

Is everybody just knee-jerking and barking without reading the prior posts now? There's a lot of posts so it's understandable if it's just oversight. Information can be characters on paper, it can be a sound (my voice saying "hello"), it can be an image (emoticon), it can be a body position (like my arms folded to being told DNA doesn't have any information - my body language says, "I'm not buying it"), and it appears to be believed by many in the scientific community that information exists in DNA and you and at least one other member here are so far saying to me "Nobody is saying DNA doesn't contain information of some form)... so I know there are even some here in this thread alone that believe DNA contains information.

I'll move on to your "So what?" part in another post (hopefully soon)... first I'm just trying to establish with everyone with the interest in commenting that DNA contains information. That's all.

 

[NobleMouse]

I have (although it's been some time).

Then why deliberately misrepresent his views on DNA and gene transfer?

Here's the thing; real evolutionary biologists at some point included the word "information" regarding DNA as a hyperbolic way to describe how these nucleic acids follow specific chemical laws, not realizing, and quite frankly blithely unaware, of common creationists tactics. Creos jumped on this hyperbolic use of "information" and said, 'aha, DNA is information, and all information needs a coder - therefore god.' It's a blatant misrepresentation of a colloquial explanation.

I'm not trying to misrepresent anything - Darwin stated that within genes is information. That is all I am trying to establish at this point - not everyone is on board with this idea so I can only go this far. I figured if you wouldn't trust me as a Biblical Creationist on that fact, maybe you'd trust a fellow well-known and prominent atheist. Do you disagree with Dawkins (and the vast majority of the secular scientific community) that information exists within DNA?

 

[NobleMouse]

In context, her objection was characterizing DNA as a language in the same manner as one might characterize English or Spanish. DNA is not a language in that sense.

The problem is that written languages are often used as a metaphor for DNA typically to explain how DNA is structured. This can leads people to the false impression that they are one and the same, when they are not.

Possibly, I'll wait for her to respond to confirm - until then, assuming her intent is speculation. I didn't say DNA was like a written language - language can simply be a sound, like "Hi friend", or a position (like my smiling and waving), or an image (like an emoticon) - language is not restricted to just written characters obviously.

Gitt's definition is of questionable validity and to the best of my knowledge not used by anyone except creationist organizations. I wouldn't put too much stock in it.

His definition is used by creationist organizations, so I'm open to someone providing an alternate definition of information that is a better articulation. If his definition can be demonstrated false, I'm willing to hear and discuss.

 

[NobleMouse]

These are very big 'ifs'.

Yes, my position is that these big ifs are demonstrably true... but my experience here has shown that those who feel differently aren't because they haven't given any thought... to the contrary, the position for rejecting God seems thoroughly rationalized.

To believe in God also requires some degree of faith (even if it's just a small amount - like that of a mustard seed - and that would be a lot). Now, if I may ask, and I hope this is true. Do you believe your Mom (whether alive or not) loved you? If so, how do you know? Well, she may have said so and she may have shown so by taking care of you while you were growing up, putting your needs ahead of hers.

Now, if she hasn't told you so verbally, do you believe she loved you before you were born? If she hasn't said so, you are then accepting this idea that she loved you before she could tell you so or show you so on the basis of some degree of faith. Right? So, you do have the ability to have faith in something that which you cannot tangibly see or necessarily outright prove without someone just walking in and casting doubt?

So is true with God. I can present facts and truths about God all day long, but there will always be another counter-argument to suggest to the contrary, so we each make a choice of what we're going to believe, and really, whether one believes in God or doesn't believe in God requires some degree of faith and is not a purely rationalized position.

 

[Speedwell]

In the absence of a new definition, and any effort to demonstrate the definition I provided is incorrect and/or does not fit with the characteristics of DNA then I'll continue to use the definition I have sourced for information and will assume your interest in discussing further is no longer.

It's hard to remain interested when you continue with your falsehood, that secular scientists are using the same definition as the one you are using. I have explained to you the definition that secular scientists use and why DNA does not satisfy the definition you are using and you have made no coherent response, except to insist that when people like Dawkins assert that there is information in DNA they mean the same thing by it as you do. Why should I be interested in discussing the matter with you any further?

 

[Speedwell]

I'm not trying to misrepresent anything - Darwin stated that within genes is information. That is all I am trying to establish at this point - not everyone is on board with this idea so I can only go this far. I figured if you wouldn't trust me as a Biblical Creationist on that fact, maybe you'd trust a fellow well-known and prominent atheist. Do you disagree with Dawkins (and the vast majority of the secular scientific community) that information exists within DNA?

Yes, they do, but they define "information" differently than you do.

 

[pitabread]

His definition is used by creationist organizations, so I'm open to someone providing an alternate definition of information that is a better articulation.

That would be Shannon's definition of Information: https://arxiv.org/abs/1612.09316

And unlike Gitt's definition, Shannon's definition has actually been applied to DNA: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3220916/

If his definition can be demonstrated false, I'm willing to hear and discuss.

This is backwards. It's not that his definition needs to be demonstrated as false; it's that it needs to be demonstrated as correct. Based on my reading of Gitt's work, his definition of 'information' is formulated based on little more than a series of unsupported assertions.

There is no sense blindly subscribing to a definition without first checking to see whether it's even valid.

 

[Speedwell]

And that's not even the point. Gitt can define "information" any way he wants. But NobleMouse is trying to make us believe that when a secular scientist asserts that there is information in DNA he means the same thing by it as Gitt does. That is just plain dishonest.

 

[Bugeyedcreepy]

To the non-atheist, God is not "created", He is the creator. I suspect you already knew this, right? Just picking out a random verse from the Bible, "to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen" (Jude 25).

From this, the Christian accepts that God always was, is, and forever will be. Psalms 147:5 states, "
Great is our Lord, and abundant in power; his understanding is beyond measure." So, to the Christian, God's wisdom is infinite and has always been.

God <> man... man has to learn to gain wisdom, God does not have to learn for He knows all things. This is not something you and I can tangibly see under a microscope, through a telescope, through radiometric dating, through the measurement of distance of stars using parallax or red/blue-shift... it is believed by faith. If; however, once accepts that God exists and that God created everything, then one clearly sees His intelligence is beyond measure when they look through the microscope, the telescope, physical laws, a study of astronomy, etc...

There is absolutely no answer to your question under the paradigm from which you operate (atheism), so just temporarily if you can ask yourself, "If I believed God was real and true and accepted the above verses as speaking to qualities of His character and nature, would I believe God always was, and has always possessed all intelligence?" I think you'll find that you would. If I turn the table and said if I didn't believe God was real and true, I can understand from your paradigm why the question of where God received His intelligence is posed.

Right. so there is a circumstance by which intelligence doesn't have to be given by a higher intelligence then? Good, we can drop that as a hard and fast rule if your God didn't get his from a higher intelligence, no matter how long he's been around, because your God existing for an eternity before we were around still necessitates his intelligence coming from somewhere.

more to the point, what is Satan thinking that he and 1/3 of the angels could battle God in heaven with his infinite wisdom and omnipotence? ...but I digress - the hominid apes that led to our existence have an ever increasing cranial capacity that gives us bigger brains and that in conjunction with a number of mutations in genes known to increase our grey matter density can easily explain our intelligence. Intelligence is an emergent quality of animal life and we see it at all levels throughout the animal kingdom.

 

[tas8831]

Quote taken from 7th grade biology science book.
"'gill slits' that appear in all vertebrate embryos are properly called 'pharyngeal arches'. These arches are actually folds of tissue that do not function in respiration during the embryonic stage. In fact, the pharyngeal arches do not develop into breathing organs in any vertebrate except fish. In humans, they form parts of the jaw, ear, and several endocrine glands."

It is almost as if creationists refuse to read the books they claim their lies appear in...

 

[tas8831]

And that's not even the point. Gitt can define "information" any way he wants. But NobleMouse is trying to make us believe that when a secular scientist asserts that there is information in DNA he means the same thing by it as Gitt does. That is just plain dishonest.

One of Gitt's many problems is that his definitions are a house of cards - each 'upper level' of information is dependent upon the lower level before it - except at the very beginning. The first level is the DNA sequence. Change the sequence, you change the 'information'. But he refuses to acknowledge this very simple axiom for his own 'definition.'

 

[tas8831]

How about one from the medical community?

"The coccyx has two main functions: (vestigial organs have no 'function').

• It bears weight when somebody is sitting down.
• Various muscles, tendons and ligaments are attached to it."

https://www.your.md/condition/coccydinia/

This should settle the argument.

If the argument is that you yet again show your lack of relevant knowledge, then yes - it is a creationist canard that a vestigial structure must have no function.
Google knowledge can only take you so far - say, to the front pews of your church. But in real life, this sort of game you play makes the truly informed laugh at your smug desperation.


Had you bothered to read the OP and the second post, you could have spared yourself the usual Dunning-Kruger effect-based embarrassment.

Aorta send motor impulses to your larynx via the RNL... LOL!!!!


Not even worth the effort.

 

[tas8831]

I believe every example of where information is found, behind it is the mind of an intelligent being.

In the case of Nature, I do not believe that without sufficient evidence. Analogies are not evidence. Werner Gitt is not the ultimate authority on the subject. Real evidence, please.

If we think of a book, a computer, DNA, etc... Can you think of an example where information exists that was not not put there by a mind?

DNA.

Your mere beliefs and the circular and self-serving fancifcul 'definitions' of creationists are not convincing in the least.
Computers and books are human contrivances - and as such, the analogy breaks down when trying to use it to prove 'information from a mind' in DNA, since we KNOW that humans make books and computers. Unless your position is that humans are the intelligence behind the information in DNA, then you really have no point at all.

Also, do you agree that DNA is information?

The sequence of DNA conveys information, sure - in the broadest sense. But keep in mind that the concept of information is a human contrivance.

Now back to the coccyx - any commentary on my take down of creationist disinformation on the subject as indicated in the OP?

 

[tas8831]

Right. so there is a circumstance by which intelligence doesn't have to be given by a higher intelligence then? Good, we can drop that as a hard and fast rule if your God didn't get his from a higher intelligence, no matter how long he's been around, because your God existing for an eternity before we were around still necessitates his intelligence coming from somewhere.

Its turtles all the way down, well, except for that first one!

Isn't it precious how the creationist conjures up these escape-clauses for their fantasies?