Genome complexity: what genes do and don't do (Introduction)

by dhw, Wednesday, January 23, 2019, 13:02 (1921 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: You appear to have withdrawn your definition of information as instructions, but you still haven’t redefined it. I understand it as meaning facts or details about a particular subject. It cannot do anything, but has to be used.

DAVID: You have followed instructions in learning how to use a new machine, your computer for instance.

I can’t follow your analogy. We’re dealing with the invention of the machine (the "fully functioning being" or species) not how the invention is to be used! You have told us the article is an exact expression of your thoughts, and the article quite specifically states that the DNA code is a passive data base (= passive information) “cannot possibly serve as instructions”, cells “learn” and “create instructions on the hoof” and create instructions “de novo”. Now you’ve reverted to your belief that information means instructions, and lower down (bolded) you will tell us it is active.

DAVID: Life emerges from a very complex set of biochemical reactions.

Of course. That does not mean that the first DNA contained “a complete list of instructions for cells to respond to all stimuli”.

DAVID: Shapiro tells us that the cells in all of this massive activity can modify their genome to alter their function. This implies that the instructions for life are used and malleable. You appear to approach information as descriptive, but in life it is a central active component which makes life emerge.

And Shapiro tells us that cells are sentient, intelligent, decision-making beings, and anyone who thinks otherwise is guilty of “large organisms chauvinism”. Intelligent modification of the genome does not imply using existing instructions, and according to the article which expressed your thoughts exactly, the information in the code is a passive data base which “cannot possibly serve as instructions” etc. – as quoted above. Also we are talking about evolution. Life emerging = the first cells, which one day apparently contain all the instructions for every innovation, lifestyle and natural wonder in the history of life, the next day they don’t, and now they do again.

DAVID: If it is accepted that God is in control of evolution, as I do, the cells make adaptations within His limits.

dhw: We have discussed the “limits”, and you could only come up with restrictions imposed by the environment and by the capabilities of the cells themselves. Now please explain what you mean by a “layer of control”

DAVID: It is a concept. Just as you have an idea that cells contain their own inventive mechanism (IM) I can see it existing with God-imposed limits to the degree of modification.

And apart from limits imposed by the environment and by their own capabilities, what “limits” do you see?

DAVID: Behe explains that small alterations in DNA can make evolutionary advances. You assume large.

dhw: Small alterations do not mean God removing 99% of his 3.8 byo programmes in order to produce one new species (= “new form”).

DAVID: Strange response. Loss of 99% of species in no way implies 99% of the original DNA is lost. For example genes are only 2-4% of human DNA with the rest containing modifiers. Advances do require deletions per Behe, but also rearrangements. Our DNA with 3.3 billion bases has lots of room to do this.

I didn’t say 99% of the DNA was lost! According to this theory, your God implanted instructions (programmes) in the DNA for every future species. And so for each new species, all the other instructions/programmes had to be deleted. It’s you and Behe who are promoting the idea of deletion, so what exactly do you think is deleted if not your instructions/programmes? In passing, I don’t like the word “advances” on its own. I don’t regard whale fins as an advance on pre-whale legs, or toothlessness/baleens as an advance on teeth, but I do accept your own contention that evolution is a bush and not a tree. The higgledy-piggledy bush of evolution sprawls outwards (not an advance) as well as upwards. And yes, our DNA has lots of room for rearrangements, and the articles suggest that only small rearrangements are necessary for large changes, but if DNA is a passive data base, it is the active organisms (comprising cell communities) that use the passive information.

dhw: Sorry you choose only to pick on the parenthesis concerning survival, which is dealt with under “Little Foot”.

DAVID: I saw nothing to respond to besides survival. You made your usual attempt to interpret the bush of life as something God produced but offered none of your humanizing reasons for God doing it. My idea that it is for food fits the facts of natures balance each ecosystem with its top predator.

On the subject of survival, see “Little Foot” again. Your idea is that your always-in-control God specially designed a bush of food to fill in 3.5+ billion years of life until he could specially design the only thing he wanted to design. I suggest that the helter-skelter bush is the result of him wishing to create a helter-skelter bush. We needn’t go into the “humanizing” reasons we both hypothesize.