Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/5/84; site uwmacc.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!genrad!mit-eddie!think!harvard!seismo!uwvax!uwmacc!dubois From: dubois@uwmacc.UUCP (A Ray Miller) Newsgroups: net.origins Subject: codes, design, creation, intelligence Message-ID: <1270@uwmacc.UUCP> Date: Wed, 10-Jul-85 18:11:56 EDT Article-I.D.: uwmacc.1270 Posted: Wed Jul 10 18:11:56 1985 Date-Received: Wed, 17-Jul-85 00:39:08 EDT Distribution: net Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Lines: 90 /* Written 5:18 pm Jul 9, 1985 by miller@uiucdcsb.Uiuc.ARPA in uiucdcsb:net.origins */ /* ---------- "codes,designs,creation,intelligence" ---------- */ Merlyn Leroy, responding to a note I had written on informational thermo- dynamics, writes: > There is the Miller experiment, which attempted to recreated the > young Earth environment, ran an energy source through it (a spark gap), and > ended up with amino acids, some fairly long, in only two weeks. There are many problems with Miller's experiments; I'll mention just a few briefly. First, all he produced was racemates, i.e., a 50% 50% mixture of laevorotary and dextrorotary amino acids. These molecules are mirror images of each other (geometrically). However, virtually all life uses only L-forms. The presence of even a single D-form can be lethal. Second, the destruction rate of the compounds is far higher than the production rate. When you trap out the products to get around this problem, you also remove the products from their energy source, and further progress becomes impossible. It's a catch-22 situation. Third, he generated no code capable of carrying information. Ignoring for a moment the problem of the D-form amino acids, he has (roughly) a random-letter generator (using a chemical alphabet). What does he produce? A sequence of words such as: kjemmp lma wwqnx z pr gmbv ytc d qhiojfs xa u bqop. This does not carry information. Even if you generate short "words" such as "a", "i", or even "the" mixed in with the above, it has no information content since it is a meaningless sequence of characters generated randomly. You will never be able to generate randomly a meaningful code in the lifetime of the universe, even one as short as "the theory of evolution". I want to dwell on this third point a little longer, but from a different angle. A few weeks back on CNN, there was a little story on SETI, the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence. This is a big telescope at Harvard (staffed only be evolutionists, of course) which has been scanning the skies for the last 25 years, hunting for evidence of life on another planet. They do this by examining the electromagnetic frequency spectrum, looking for "evidence of design". This has several implications for net.origins. First, the SETI group must feel that time, chance, and natural processes are not sufficient to produce a code capable of carrying information. In this case, the code is electromagnetic. Anyone currently reading this note is looking at a 26 letter code and no one, I'm sure, thinks it was produced by a random-letter generator, or a bug, or any other form of time, chance, and natural processes. When we look at the DNA of *any* life form, it is also a code (of a 4 chemical alphabet) which is far more advanced than any babble I'm likely to produce. The media on which the code is carried is unimportant. Why then do we say DNA was produced by time, chance, and natural processes? Second, SETI claims they can recognize a designed object, i.e., one which requires intelligence (the I in SETI). Note that this is not due to any inherent properties in the object itself. The designed object will be some pattern of electromagnetic frequency in a sea of random electromagnetic fre- quencies. It must be, therefore, be due solely to the nature of the pattern itself, i.e., a code carrying some information. Yet not a week goes by on this net that we don't hear evolutionists tell us they can't recognize evidence of design and intelligence. They tell us this, of course, only when it's convenient, in other words, when they're talking to creationists. When they're working on SETI, or looking for arrowheads made out of rocks just like all the other rocks lying on the ground, or noticing the difference between a sandcastle on a beach and the patterns waves make on that same beach, then - well, even a child can recognize that which took creative thought and that which natural processes can produce. (A footnote here. Symmetry, such as that formed in a crystal like ice, provides no help for the evolutionists, despite comments by some on this net. One of the guys CNN talked to from SETI mentioned they got a symmetric pattern once - they had discovered a pulsar. It contained no information, however, and although an important discovery, provided no hope of ever producing life.) Finally, it is theoretically possible to translate the DNA patterns of E. coli into an electromagnetic pattern (DNA, of course, being based on a simple four character alphabet). This is a simple mapping function, e.g., these very words have been mapped several times into analog and digital elec- tronic values from when my fingers typed on 26 keys. All are equivalent, of course. If SETI were to pick up such a transmission of E. coli DNA patterns, it would be trivial to recognize, and no doubt the High Priest of Evolution, Carl Sagan, would say: "Aha! We have evidence of an intelligent designer, which we have not seen directly, but must exist." So when that same Carl Sagan sees E. coli here on earth, along with vastly more advanced forms of life expressing codes we haven't even begun to decipher, must less design ourselves (simply expressed in a chemical rather than electronic alphabet) what does he say? "Evolution is a fact - like apples falling off trees." For my part, I'll stick with a Creator and information theory, rather than with Sagan and wishful thinking. P.S. I'll put the shoe on the other foot now: Would some evolutionist on the net care to give us a definition of design which would allow SETI to recognize created patterns but would differentiate against those patterns found here on earth evolutionists claim to be produced only by natural processes? Well????? A. Ray Miller Univ Illinois /* End of text from uiucdcsb:net.origins */ -- | Paul DuBois {allegra,ihnp4,seismo}!uwvax!uwmacc!dubois --+-- | "More agonizing, less organizing." |