Natures wonders: Subsea Microorganisms Long Life (Introduction)

by David Turell , Monday, August 20, 2018, 15:13 (2285 days ago) @ dhw

TONY: If you look at DNA as a programming language, the commonalities do not HAVE to represent common decent so much as common functionality. Let me give you an example […]

dhw: Tony, thank you for the example, but to my shame I must confess that your computer language is totally foreign to me! It was you who kindly selected this lecture for us, but if you are satisfied that DNA is in the sort of programming language you are familiar with, I’m not going to argue with you! I listened to the opinion of a microbiologist, and was struck by what she said. However, I notice that your objection is that “the commonalities do not HAVE to represent common descent” (which certainly modifies her statement). At least that means, though, that you believe they CAN represent common descent. My point was that the cell is the basis of all life, and I find it perfectly conceivable that its design (which believers may attribute to their God) would render cells capable of combining with other cells to create every single organism, extant and extinct, throughout the history of life. This means common descent from the first living cells. Your post clearly doesn’t exclude this possibility, which is good enough for me.

DAVID: This has got to be a different branch than Archaea. It is not a candidate for origin of life since its reproductive rate is so long, it doesn't allow for evolution at the rate we see it out in the sunlight on the surface of Earth or at ocean bottom interface with salt water.

dhw: I don’t know why you have switched the subject from common descent to origin of life. I may be wrong, but I don’t remember Karen Lloyd even mentioning the origin of life, and she gave the same explanation for why the microbes couldn’t evolve.

DAVID: Thank you Tony. Great lecture. And further thank you for interpreting DNA as a program for processing life with functional coding. Easy to imagine a primary designer for the first living cells from which these sub-sea oganisms must have developed.

dhw: Ah! I’d be interested to know, then, if you reject Tony's conclusion and agree with Karen Lloyd that ALL organisms, from bacteria to humans, must have developed from the first living cells.

You have never understood my view that the issue of common descent and evolution must include consideration of the first cells, not avoid it as you and Darwin do. If Archaea look like the first branch, I wondered where this group fit. They are later, based on the slow pace of their metabolism.

Tony's comment: "This code is nearly ubuiquitous in all c++ programming. You would be hard pressed to find a modern C++ program that does not contain this code. The start and end values may be different, and the 'do something' code may be different, but the iterator framework is identical.

This is exactly what we see in the LPL (living programming language). How can we both look at the same exact chart and see such totally different things? Because of which narrative we are using to describe what we see. To an evolutionist, it means common decent, even across species who obviously did not descend from each other. For me, it shows a programming language with reusable elements that does not care about descent."

All I see is Tony noting how DNA fits human coding technique.