I know. The understanding of evolution has progressed by leaps and bounds since Darwin, and DNA has been one of the most significant discoveries.Originally Posted by T1
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I know. The understanding of evolution has progressed by leaps and bounds since Darwin, and DNA has been one of the most significant discoveries.
A virus would have to have come after the cell because it attacks cells. It doesn't have a cell. They say the first form of life was bacteria. However, cells instructed bacteria to form as bacteria, so a single cell is the first form of life and it consists of information (DNA) to instruct the organism to become what it becomes. The first bacteria would have been the first to "interpret" the information of the cell as it followed the orders of the cell to become bacteria. Where this information the cells give to organisms comes from or how it happened is still a scientific mystery.
It all depends on how you define life. By classic definitions, the earliest form of life that we are aware of is bacteria. But forms of information, randomly assembled, could have preceded it. We might not call that information life, but it could still be capable of replicating. For example, viruses contain information. These bits of information provide a vector for inserting new information into something that could become a “life” or into something that already is a life to become different.
Also, I think you are imputing a “purpose” onto a virus that is unnecessary. “Information” can exist in various random forms that isn’t used. The reason we know about viruses is because they do interact with our cells.
DNA is a physical/chemical thing. It isn’t information until we assign meaning to it and interpret it. It behaves physically and chemically in accordance with its structure and chemistry. It reacts to build complex proteins. The specific chemical configuration of the DNA dictates it’s reaction product. The nucleotide sequence of the DNA sequence dictates the amino acid sequence of the protein, and the amino acid sequence of the protein impacts the way it folds and physically behaves. Nucleic acids catalyze the production of amino acids, thus DNA begets proteins. The complex functions that cells performed are dictated by the structure of these proteins. For evolutionary reasons, DNA that codes for useful proteins gets selected for and others get selected against.
A plausible natural cause is not sufficient to conclude that causation is natural. It's a philosophical decision to only accept natural explanations, not a scientific one.
There's a lot more here that I don't have time to respond to at this time, but I thought this was a pertinent point.
Time is your friend. Impulse is your enemy. -John Bogle
Calling life "information" doesn't help your atheism. Information can only come from an informer. It's a definer of life. An instructor of organism-building. This kind of thing shouldn't exist in a random, uncaused, unguided universe. DNA was doing its thing (building organisms) billions of years before "we" were around to assign meaning to it (according to your faith).
Ridiculous. Is hydrogen information because it reacts with water?
We call it information because we capable of understanding it as information. Nothing more, nothing less. It is just a fact of existence until we give it meaning, then, and only then, is it information.
Meant to say reacts with oxygen to make water...
DNA is information technology, like computer software. It builds organisms. It's like a manual that comes with a bunch of parts that you turn into a bicycle (or whatever your have ordered and need to know how to assemble). You started calling viruses and lots of other things information so I just told you that doesn't help your argument. Information must come from a mind. A cell acts as a mind to build organisms the way they are to be built. Human cells have information to build humans. Bacteria cells have information to build bacteria. We were discussing how that information got into the cell.
Wow. I hope you didn’t take molecular biology at Tech.
How does oxygen know what it reacts with? Where did it get its information?
If it helps you to think of DNA as software (as it does most people), that is fine. But that doesn’t in any way imply how the “code” was created. Unlike bits of information, physically represented by sequences of electrons, the information is in the order of Nucleic acids in a polymeric-like chain, that get copied a whole bunch into DNA and RNA in the presence of other chemical promoters (like enzymes). Apart from replicating themselves, sequences of the chemical chain also react with other chemical promoters to make similar chemical chains out of amino acids, which we know as proteins. That is what DNA does. It replicates and makes proteins, so do viruses and prions. It is not a given that any protein structure would help sustain a cell’s ability to “live”. Certain protein structures do facilitate survival, adaptation, reproduction. Cells that have those sequences in their DNA tend to do better and proliferate the “good code.”
That doesn’t remotely suggest the cells were programmed. They just behave as chemicals do.
Wow, hope you didn't study philosophy at Tech. Science does explain DNA as a software program that builds organisms (as you agree), but they have yet to determine how software technology could possibly be billions of years older than intelligence. Software is used by computer programmers to run computer programs. Organisms also appear to be programmed similar to how computers are. That's not a huge leap to comprehend is it?
DNA isn’t a software program. I don’t agree. Organism do NOT appear to be programmed like a computer. The analogy doesn’t go nearly that far.
Don't take my word for it...
"Biology has turned into computer science." Richard Dawkins (most outspoken atheist in the world, perhaps).
Just a side note a "virus" is not alive, it is not life. It has only 4 of the 5 requirements to be "life." If I remember correctly they lack the ability to reproduce on their own.
Of course, speaking of computers (and you were) a virus that infects a 'puter seems to take on a life of its own.
Only a moron would compare a simple chemical bond such as 2 H's and 1 O forming water to the complex miracle that is DNA. Surely no one here did that...right?
This isn't about biology, it's about philosophy...Dawkins is weak on that. To get a more honest and consistent atheistic position, I would read Bertrand Russell.
Time is your friend. Impulse is your enemy. -John Bogle
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