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From: mrh@cybvax0.UUCP (Mike Huybensz)
Newsgroups: net.origins
Subject: Re: codes, design, creation, intelligence
Message-ID: <610@cybvax0.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 11-Jul-85 15:18:47 EDT
Article-I.D.: cybvax0.610
Posted: Thu Jul 11 15:18:47 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 17-Jul-85 20:33:29 EDT
References: <1270@uwmacc.UUCP>
Reply-To: mrh@cybvax0.UUCP (Mike Huybensz)
Distribution: net
Organization: Cybermation, Inc., Cambridge, MA
Lines: 191
Summary: 

In article <1270@uwmacc.UUCP> dubois@uwmacc.UUCP (A Ray Miller) writes
yet another article full of scientific misinformation:
>      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.

Modern theories of abiogenesis hypothesize that early life forms used amino
acids found in their environments, and only later started synthesizing their
own amino acids.  Possibly first to suppliment naturally synthesized amino
acids, then later to supplant them more completely until (like today) 
essentially all amino acids are produced by living organisms.

If the first synthetic pathway for amino acids of this early organism produced
only left-hand amino acids, rather than a racemic mixture, this wouldn't be
critical because they were only a suppliment.  Natural selection then would
strongly favor greater and greater usage of left-handed amino acids is it
was easier to synthesize them than to find racemic mixes produced by the
environment.

So, what Miller and Urey's experiments showed was that amino acids could be
present for early life to utilize.  See the recent Scientific American article
on recent theories of inorganic abiogenesis.

> 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.

Ray here blithely ignores all the multitudinous synthetic tricks that organic
chemists have learned over the past century or so.  Not to mention the
possibility of diffusion of high energy molecules into the trap, providing
energy for further reactions.

> 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: 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".

Modern theories of abiogenesis do not require organic informational codes until
genetic takeover occurs, long after use of organic compounds.  Thus, Miller's
experiments need not synthesize DNA or proteins.

Yet Ray misunderstands his own argument so badly that he proposes an amino
acid code which IS capable of carrying information (by his own analogy to
the alphabet.)  He selects an example of randomly generated letters, but
doesn't explain how this is analogous to anything in evolutionary theory.

>      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.

Why do you say that?  Almost any agglomeration of matter or energy is capable
of carrying encoded information.  Any crystal you look at contains vast
numbers of imperfections that could be encoded information.  For all we know,
one day we may decode it and read "Created by GOD (tm)"  :-)  The question
is whether we can discern a meaning in the patterns we perceive.

> In this case, the code is electromagnetic.

Codes are in symbols.  The carrier (medium) 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.

(Refraining from snide comments...)

The code of DNA is actually very simple.  The information contained is very
complex.

> The media on which the code is carried is unimportant.
> Why then do we say DNA was produced by time, chance, and natural processes?

Because natural selection destroys babble preferentially over meaningful
(in terms of encoding advantageous physical attributes) information.

>     Second, SETI claims they can recognize a designed object, i.e., one which
> requires intelligence (the I in SETI). 

Either they're wrong, or you're misrepresenting them.  Most likely, SETI hopes
to recognize something as produced by intelligence.

> 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.

They are looking for a small class of phenomina that due to our limited
experience we will ASSUME are designed because we design similarly AND haven't
alternative explanations for how they might have come about.
For all we know, they may already have received many messages, and not
have recognized them as being such.

> 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.

Another blatant misrepresentation.  When creationists claim to perceive
design in things that could have happened naturally, why should we blithely
accept their outrageous claims?  For example, if a creationist say a
natural arch, he might exclaim "Gawd designed it!"  But a gradualist might
observe the same arch and say "Look, the central section has been eroded out."

> 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.

Arrowheads and sandcastles are constructs that we humans design and make.
Small wonder that we can recognize our own sometimes.  But how are we to
recognize something made hy a hypothetical being?

>      (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.)

Information certainly could be placed in crystals, and transmitted by pulsars.
Crystals are not entirely regular, nor are pulsar's frequencies entirely
stable.  Given sufficient technology, information could probably be encoded
in each.

>      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."

How nice of you to put illogic into the mouth of Carl Sagan.

Let's say I transmit the gentic code of E. coli.  Does this mean I designed
E. coli?  No.  Does it mean anyone designed E. coli? No.  Does it mean that
a receiver might infer intelligence on my part?  Yes.

> 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."

Here, once again, we have the watchmaker argument, disguised as the "code
maker" argument.  And it still fails, for life and for crystals, because
we can envision natural processes that could also be responsible for the
results.  In this case, evolution.

>      For my part, I'll stick with a Creator and information theory, rather
> than with Sagan and wishful thinking.

Your ideas of information theory seem as badly misinformed as creationist ideas
of thermodynamics.  And your accusation of wishful thinking on the basis of
your fictional representation of Carl Sagan is dishonest.

> 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?????

We only know of one type of designer: humans.  It is ridiculous to think we
could generalize to recognize any evidence of design.  I'll give you a
simple example:  let's say you are given two lumps of clay.  One has been
formed naturally, and the other has been designed.  Could you discern  which
is which?
-- 

Mike Huybensz		...decvax!genrad!mit-eddie!cybvax0!mrh