The cell, "the smallest structural unit of an organism that is capable of independent functioning, consisting of one or more nuclei, cytoplasm, and various organelles, all surrounded by a semipermeable cell membrane." SOURCE

The cell contains all of the information required to make, repair, and maintain the organism its a part of. The information is stored using a genetic code made up of a four-letter alphabet A,C,G, and T.

We are expected to believe, almost required to accept, that given the proper raw materials, gathered randomly, given the exact amount of energy, also occurring at the right place at the right time randomly, and given enough time, so that enough random events can happen so that finally the proper situation can happen, life did and can develop from non-organic materials. However, there is a fourth component which is vitally important for life and which by definition cannot occur randomly - information. How simple is the information required to make the simplest organic structure?

Are you as smart as a cell?

I have written an email address using a 4-number code. If you decipher the code, send me an email to the email address you decode. The information is part of a chain of codes, and is broken down into it's three main components: name, @location, .suffix. All of the information is included in the chain. You need to decode it and put it together in a usable manner.

Please do not post the answer if you get it, so that others can also try it.

I will post the name of those who email me as I get them. Good luck!





How simple really is the information that is required to build a hair follicle? or a sweat gland, or a tongue? Is it really feasible for that kind of information to occur randomly?

This code is actually a lot more complex then the genetic code as amino acids are coded for using 3 of 4 bases rather than all 4. But I'll give it a go.

Given that the message is significantly simpler than the instructions actually coded in DNA, it should still be similar.

Could be; but there's only 21 amino acids, while your code (presumably) has 28 characters.

Does the code spell out something coherent, or are we expected to solve it using algorithms?

it's an email address

But is it coherent, containing proper words? Or a jumble of random letters?

Sorry, I misunderstood. Yes, it is made up of proper english words.

Sitting here stuck in stupid.....

What in the holy hell of earth are we supposed to do with a chian of numbers? Do i look like a meticulous nuclei of a cell ready to break down genobe? Nop, i've got about 1.2.3.4......100+trillion to do it for me

Kinda guessing no-one's emailed you yet, right?

You've encoded an email address using 16 characters. Assuming that you've left out the @ and the . in the email address, you might just want to give us a hint about which 16 characters you've used, as :

any 16 characters out of 26 = 26! / [26-16]! * 16! = 403291461126605635584000000 / 3628800 * 20922789888000 = 5,311,735 potential combinations

...And that's just for starters. Even if you were to tell us which characters you used, other than statistical analysis of character repetition (which an email address is just waaaaaay too short to use), there's no other way to decrypt what that is.

Even if I backward engineered the statistical analysis using a few million known email addresses - I'd still probably end up with a good 100,000 or so potential candidates.

Sooooooo. Wouldn't be expecting an email anytime soon, old chap.

I do, however, see the point that you're trying to make, but I respectfully disagree. Complexity does *not* imply design. If anything, the massive redundancy within the genetic sequence implies an inherent lack of design.

I'm not even going to attempt to decipher the numbers because my answer is simple....No.
I believe in Athiest Intelligent Design. ie; God did not create us but the alternative belief that alien lifeforms did.

Actually, no, I did not leave out the "@" sign or the "." Also, although the email is a coherent (english words) address it is not coded in as name@location.suffix, its broken into name, @location, .suffix. I can also tell you that the last number in each sequence tells you whether it's a number, a symbol (@, ^, ., as examples), a vowel, or a consonant. If complexity is not implication of design, then this coded email address could have just happened? I don't think so.

Actually, it's not the complexity I'm addressing, it's the fact that DNA is considered a language, mathematically and statistically. Language is information, information requires intelligence. Intelligence was required to set up this code, and intelligence will be required to decode it.


Where did the alien lifeforms come from?

I can understand that it might appear so to you looking at DNA at this level of construction. But if you break it down further, you'll see that it is a chemical language, determined and confined by the laws of chemistry, the atomical structure and properties of molecules. Although the biology of living organisms is incredilby complex and wonderful, at the atomic-chemical level it becomes quite straightforward. If you look at base-pairs, for example, withing the DNA double helix, Adenine can only ever bond with Thymine via hydrogen-bonds, and Guanine only ever to Cytosine because of their molecular structure. Similarly, have a look at how Cacium pumps work, or osmoregulation, or pH...just a few examples.

As an old professor once said when he heard myself and a friend talking about love:" It's all chemistry, my deahh, it's all chemistry...."

I'm not the one looking at it that way, the scientists who have studied it have determined it is a language.

DNA isn't 'decoded' like that.

You have a strain of mRNA, which contains all of the bases waiting to be 'decoded', which looks like this:

┴-┴-┴-┴-┴-┴-┴-┴-┴-┴-┴-┴
A G C U A U G C A G A U

Every three bases makes up what is called a 'codon', so here the first codon would be AGC, the second would be UAU and so on.

Now all bases have a complementary base, they fit together in pairs: Adenine is complementary to Thymine (the mRNA variant is called Uracil), and Guanine is complementary to Cytosine.

Codons are able to code for specific amino acids, because amino acids come associated with anticodons (triple nucleotide complementary to codon):

Serine
\UCG/
┬-┬-┬

┴-┴-┴-┴-┴-┴-┴-┴-┴-┴-┴-┴
A G C U A U G C A G A U

The anticodon UCG is associated with the amino acid Serine, so just with the complementary bases pairing up the right amino acid is coded for from the DNA; it doesn't require intelligence.

I understand. However, I am not intelligent enough to come up with a code as good as the language used in DNA, and after several days of failed attempts, this was the best I could come up with that would show some of the complexity and elegance.

But the genetic code is incredibly simple, which is why it works so brilliantly.

Well, they are trying to describe a phenomenon with language. It's mainly called a code, the genetic code. A football thrown across a field follows the laws of physics, which can be expressed in mathematical formulae, or mathematical 'language. that doesn't make the football particularly intelligent, does it? It doesn't need to understand the physical laws it follows in order to fly across the field; it doesn't really have a choice, it has to.
And although it certainly needs intelligence on our level to understand it, every single cell in our body decodes, e.g. follows these chemical instructions 24/7 in zillions of chemical reactions without a hint of intelligence. Unless you are positing that our cells are conscious & intelligent.

I'll have to dig up the book, but DNA was not just described as language, it was defined as a language, mathematically and statistically a language.

What would be the significance of it being defined as a language? That still doesn't mean intelligence is required.

Really?

A language does not require intelligence? How do words, sentences, paragraphs, chapters and books get written without intelligent involvement?

Just because man labeled it a 'language' don't mena didly. We could say the moon was a giant ball of cheese, is ti? Heck no! and the last time i checked, cells aren't sentient, therefor aren't intelligent.

The genetic code is what it is. It doesn't matter what we define it as, it doesn't change.

I don't know how anyone arrived at the conclusion that it was a language, I can't think of any definition of the word which can account for that, but it certainly isn't a language in the same sense as you or I would recognize. Unless you're able to demonstrate how intelligence is involved you just seem to be using broken logic to support your argument.

OK, so if we are not going to accept what the experts say (which I really am perfectly fine with) then why should we believe the fossils found are millions of years old, or that species can change to other species, after all that is also only men labeling stuff.

please tell me how cells are smart, i want to learn how to break down genobe!

No, that isn't a label, it is a name of a process. You could call the process of eating whatever you want, you're still eating. Like i said, genetic code is called a language for the average joe's understanding.

cells are just the programmed hardware. The programmer is smart.

ooooooooook. So now it takes no intelligence on the cells part, and i assume you mean god by the "programmer".

Alright, here's what you're trying to say:

Language requires intelligence > DNA is a language > Therefore DNA requires intelligence.

That's broken logic. Why? Anyone who does define the genetic code as a language is using an obscure definition of the word obviously unfamiliar to both of us, I'd bet intelligence isn't a property of that definition.

If you really want to convince us that intelligence is required, demonstrate it.

Yes, please do.

Here's what I don't get.

Why is it easier to accept that a great being with all sorts of powers came into existence without a Creator, and a simple DNA strand couldn't?


IN my mind the only thing needed to create is energy and time. If you have enough of both of them you don't need a creator.

Now where did "Just enough" energy and time come from?

We don't know. And where did God come from ? We don't know either.

I used to deconstruct things this way to Iams, and what I realized is that I always stopped before I got to God and and said "But where did that first spark, that first thing that existed come from....something MUST have created that!

But why? If you are willing that God existed on his own, why not energy and time?

AMEN!!

Hubert P. Yockey, "Self Organization, Origin-of-Life Scenarios and Information Theory" Journal of Theoretical Biology, vol 91 (1981)

Markov process (′mär′köf prä·səs)

(mathematics) A stochastic process which assumes that in a series of random events the probability of an occurrence of each event depends only on the immediately preceding outcome.

It's all about Information Theory

Yes, but you are missing the point. No intelligence is needed to process the data, it just is processed. But if you truly believe cells are smart, demonstrate it, giving the definition of lguage is hardly doing anything for you but telling us you know how to research.

Well I'll take your information theory and I'll raise you a fractal. If you stand back far enough and allow something random to take its course, eventually a pattern will emerge. Its totally random. And therefor not requiring any intelligence for it to happen.

Brainblast! Lmao, J/K. But what about pi? You forgot pi, 44 1/2 Billion decimal places, and no pattern!

I think Iams beleives that DNA is a language of data, when in fact DNA is a language of chemicals which is why he's using this broken logic to support himself.

I think Raptor has proven his point that Iams is wrong in his thinking and Truethat caught the conundrum of Iams ideology. Also, as Tiggs pointed out there are over 500,000 different combinations, and givin the time life had to evolve on this planet, 500,000 different combinations of data could easily have happened. But of course DNA is not data, it's chemical data.

How can you say there is no pattern, there's a pattern if you WANT THERE TO BE! Aha and that's the key isn't it. If you want to see a pattern you will. I just don't feel like doing it. LOL


http://www.uoguelph.ca/zoology/devobio/210...sisQuiz/pi.html


One thing to remember is that when we try to figure things out we do so in ways that are most compatible to our brain function. So we likely seek out patterns that on a grander scale might be irrelevant.

That's nice; but unless I'm missing the point, completely irrelevant?

If you were able to find a pattern in Pi, your name would be printed in a few textbooks for sure.

There's way more to it than energy and time, true. You see, the function is not just energy + time = life, it's energy + time + information = life. DNA is information.

Lane P. Lester and Raymond G. Bohlin, The Natural Limits to Biological Change (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 1984), 86 (emphasis added)

Leslie Orgel, The Origin of Life (New York: Wiley, 1973), 189 (emphasis added)

Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1987) 17-18, 116.

There is information LOTS of information involved in the making and maintaining of an organism. Yes, possibly energy and time would have produced after countless random and senseless events the right kinds of proteins, but energy and time do not produce information

There's way more to it than energy and time, true. You see, the function is not just energy + time = life, it's energy + time + information = life. DNA is information.

It's not so much information than a mechanism. A mechanism on a chemical, atomic level. An atom of a particular element, same as a molecule, is defined by it's atomic structure, and will react with other atoms/molecules based on it's electron configuration/chemical properties. It's automatic, you could say. In simple terms, a carbon atom has an affinity to bind covalently to four other atoms because it lacks four electrons to fill it's valence shell. A hydrogen atom will automatically form a hydrogen bond with an oxygen atom in certain conditions, forced by it's atomic properties. The function of a protein is defined by it's shape, it MUST bind to other proteins or enzymes, or what have you, under certain conditions- it's a natural law, a chemical reaction. DNA is a MECHANISM; one chemical reaction will trigger a chain-reaction of other chemical reaction.

QUOTE
The DNA in living cells contains coded information. It is not surprising that so many terms used in describing DNA and its functions are language terms. We speak of the genetic code. DNA is transcribed into RNA. RNA is translated into protein. Protein, in a sense, is coded in a foreign language from DNA. RNA could be said to be a dialect of DNA. Such designations are not simply convenient or just anthropomorphisms. They accurately describe the situation.... The genetic code is composed of four letters (nucleotides), which are arranged into sixty-four words of three letters each (triplets or codons). These words are organized in sequence to produce sentences (genes). Several related sentences are strung together and perform as paragraphs (operons). Tens or hundreds of paragraphs comprise chapters (chromosomes), and a full set of chapters contains all the necessary information for a readable book (organism).
Lane P. Lester and Raymond G. Bohlin, The Natural Limits to Biological Change (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 1984), 86 (emphasis added)

I find this definition a bit unlucky, or prone to misinterpretation. The organization of DNA, RNA, nucleotides, codons, operons, etc, are basically just parts of a mechanism organized within themselves in an ascending hierarchy of structure.

QUOTE
Living organisms are distinguished by their specified complexity. Crystals... fail to qualify as living because they lack complexity, random mixtures of polymers fail to qualify because they lack specificity.
Leslie Orgel, The Origin of Life (New York: Wiley, 1973), 189 (emphasis added)

That doesn't conclude intelligence

There is information LOTS of information involved in the making and maintaining of an organism. Yes, possibly energy and time would have produced after countless random and senseless events the right kinds of proteins, but energy and time do not produce information


Again, if you look at things on a chemical level, things are not quite as random as you might think. To a certain degree evolution is directional, based on the physical laws acting on a chemical level.A stone also contains information. To US, in the sense of it's atomic properties. A mountain also contains lots of information if you look at the geological strata with regards to its geological history; so does an ice core, etc, etc,

It only seems "Not random" because we are trying to understand it.


Silly example I know but think of the way a bumblebee can not aerodynamically supposedly fly. Now if we are looking for the answer to flying and we started with the bumble bee, for the sake of argument, say we found out how the bumble bee flew and there were no other flying animals on the planet.

How would we explain flight? It would be completely different.

My point is we are looking for answers. And in the midst of all the patterns that we have found and the answers we know, is a vast amount of data that we don't understand and we can't figure out.

For example what causes mitosis? What "causes it" we know how it happens by why does it happen. We look at this and see the resulting "fractal-like" pattern of the result of the mitosis and assign cause based on what we have figured out.

But we don't know for sure this is why it happens.

The only two things needed to do anything are time and energy. No god necessary.

The definition of pattern that i am using is a way to prdict the next of a list, such a pattern isn't present in pi, if it is, you should bring it to those folks who have been looking most of their lives.

Oh I see...my bad.

Elohim believe that they are the result of wiser, more scientifically advanced beings who have created them, just as they have created us.

But it's a bit like me asking you where did God come from, isn't it?

Seriously, why is harder to believe that a simple strand of DNA came about with no creator, than a immensely powerful being with all sorts of power came about with no creator, yet has no proof or effect on anything?

* Plays along *

Analysing the last number gives us:

1 = 15 occurrences
2 = 9 occurrences
3 = 6 occurrences
4 = 2 occurrences

Statistically speaking, that would mean that 1 = consonants, 2 = vowels, 3 = symbols and 4 = numbers.

However...

I know that we're expecting two commas. Therefore I'd expect to see two numbers that end in 3 the same.

What we have however, are:

1123
1223
4113
3113
3223
and 4123

...


So - One of the following is true:

1. There's a typo.
2. Part of the 4 digit code for symbols is redundant.
3. Each symbol encoding has a dependency on the previous codes.
4. The email address is out of normal statistical range.

* Asks politely for hint *

I think it's a very complex question and is THE question that's at the core of what we believe. It's like we have to make a choice.

In defending evolution on another thread I was put in my place by a good retort I thought by Fearisgood when I said how Creationists blew my mind in how they could belve in a God...
"Oh well, might as well say Evolutionists blow my mind, how could you possibly choose to believe some time somewhere, somehow an unknown mechanism gave rise to an unknown organism we can't define, and then everything living we observe today arose from that unknown entity? How did it happen, time a lot of luck? Was there a magic mechanism that is unobservable today, whereby this magical mechanism randomly waved its workings and 'voila' an incredibly complex cell, now go forth and mutate into all the complex organisms we observe today."

Sometimes it's not so easy to believe that a "simple strand of DNA came out with no Creator" is what we should put our faith in completely.

And yet this awesome invisible, unmeasurable entity came forh completely and totally with no creator, but we have evidence of how the DNA could come to be.