Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Nelson on February 26, 2009 at 1:35am

this looks like the argument from DNA as information. if so it's been refuted already many times. for instance, here and here

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Permalink Reply by David Capito on April 6, 2009 at 9:18am

"An essential property of language is that any word can refer to any object. That is not true in genetics."

This is what comes to my mind: The word "cat" is meaningless. We could refer to the animal cat, but the word "cat" has no value to it, as we could refer to the feline animal with any words we created. A cat could be called "dog."

With genetics, this distinction is not made. In the genetic world, you can't call a cat "dog," unless it is actually dog.

The funny part about all of this talk of semantics, is that I am reminded of a funny part of Christian culture. It seems that what God says really does go. "Let there be light." Etc. So, I think it would be all too common for a christian to look at these links and see the connection.

I don't think this argument is one that would begin to sway a christian. Any ideas?

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Permalink Reply by Frink on May 31, 2009 at 2:49pm

Sounds like they're using a fallacy of equivocation. I would keep in mind that word games aren't the same as a sound argument.

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Permalink Reply by Pam on February 26, 2009 at 7:43am

I wrote my own response to that, here.

My basic argument was:

"I could spit in a puddle and find some meaningful pattern among the bubbles, but the only evidence of a mind in this scenario is the one I’m using to make sense of the pattern.

It is the human mind applied to our environment that creates the illusion of intelligent design, not visa versa."

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Permalink Reply by Atheist Ninja on March 4, 2009 at 12:24am

The fallacy is in stating that codes do not exist in nature. You can look at anything as a code. The existence of every particle and every property it possesses could technically be explained as coordinates. Saying "Minds make code, code is in nature, a mind must have made that code". Would essentially be the same as saying something as ridiculous as "I make poop, poop is everywhere, I must have pooped more than I thought".

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Permalink Reply by David Capito on April 6, 2009 at 9:09am

I'm interested, philosophically, in the idea that we are implying our information into the environment.

It is as if religion is assuming an absolute value of non-intrinsic terms like "left" and "up."

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Permalink Reply by Brad Leclerc on March 15, 2009 at 11:00am

I won't get into details (others pretty much have it covered already), but if you are interested in really digging in to the "birth" of DNA and all that fun stuff, check out "The Fifth Miracle", by Paul Davies. It lays out how DNA works, and the current working theories of how it evolved in quite a bit of detail.

Long story short, "the atheist riddle" doesn't even TRY to connect their premise (that "information" doesn't appear naturally) to any sort of reason why they might think that. Unless they've updated it recently, they don't even explain what their definition of "information" is...leaving it extremely vague and pointless as an argument...especially since they don't really make one beyond "yeah, god totally did it...cause....he must have".

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Permalink Reply by Dave G on March 16, 2009 at 11:52am

Yesterday's Atheist Experience had a caller who, very poorly, tried to present this argument.

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Permalink Reply by Audrey Jerde on April 12, 2009 at 3:14pm

The argument is basically taking advantage of the fact that people will see patterns in things where they may not actually exist.

Also, just because we call it a "code" and the DNA "encodes" information, that's just us as humans making sense of the way nature works by applying a concept we have of "encoded" information to it. The argument that codes do not exist in nature because we made them up is circular because we only call it a code so that we can make sense of it by relating the process to something that we already understand.

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Permalink Reply by Metatron on April 12, 2009 at 4:32pm

I'd like to see some messages here without the aid of the aleph-bayt code.

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Permalink Reply by deana ray on April 19, 2009 at 12:49am

But everything living thing has DNA, even bacteria. So , doesnt that just play into evolution and darwins theory?

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Permalink Reply by Dave G on April 19, 2009 at 2:44am

Not quite. Some things, such as a virus, may only have RNA. There's debate on if a virus counts as being 'alive', but it is certainly a self-replicating whatever it may be.

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