What would NOT count as evidence of God?

[excreationist]

@Keith&Co.

I found this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_a...lternative_codons_in_other_translation_tables

It shows that the translation between DNA/RNA and amino acids can change in some species.... so they are partly arbitrary....

Think of music. Notes on a sheet symbolize actions taken with an instrument. The musician sees the songwriter's intent, with accompanying notations, and tries to reproduce it.

Ok

Think of a music box. Bumps on the drum strike keys and produce notes. The action of the drum is mechanical. A bump in a certain position will make a certain note.
There's no ''symbol' involved in the box's operation,. The keys do not interpret the bumps. If some debris gets stuck to the drum, it will produce a note just like the official bumps.

In that case there are a few notes that the music box is capable of making and when there are bumps on the drum a note is pretty much instantly played. If there is a bump for C2 and E2 at the same time then notes of about 65 Hz and 82 Hz are made simultaneously. If the second bump appeared later then there would be a 65 Hz (approx) note then a 82 Hz. I'd say it is a one dimensional system - musical notes varying in a linear way....

Unlike the music box DNA/RNA handles the sequence a lot differently....

The 20 amino acids:

Like post #14 let's consider 3 bases in RNA - uracil, cytosine, and guanine...

uracil followed by cytosine followed by guanine - Serine
uracil followed by guanine followed by cytosine - Cysteine (one of the only animo acids with Sulfur)
cytosine followed by uracil followed by guanine - Leucine
cytosine followed by guanine followed by uracil - Arginine
guanine followed by uracil followed by cytosine - Valine
guanine followed by cytosine followed by uracil - Alanine (almost identical to Valine)

Unlike a linear series of notes it works like a 3 dimensional matrix.... each axis has 4 possibilities giving 64 possible combinations.... where the sequence makes a big difference.... unlike the music box example.

DNA is chemicals that initiate chemicals in dependable ways. Researchers use symbols to map it, but UUU could have been AAA. No need for an alternate universe, just different researchers. But the chemical reactions would be the same.

That isn't the case... see:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_a...lternative_codons_in_other_translation_tables

e.g. Vertebrates have different rules when translating from DNA/RNA to amino acids compared to normal DNA/RNA.... there are 4 differences including:
ATA/AUA normally translates to isoleucine but in vertebrates it involves methionine.... and TGA/UGA normally translates to "stop" but in vertebrates it means Tryptophan.... and "stop" is quite different to creating Tryptophan....
And yeast has 8 differences to normal DNA/RNA...... etc....

 

[excreationist]

Perhaps another feature of information is that it can be replicated.... Like DNA, RNA, computer information, names and words, and books. If the symbols can be replicated then the information is completely and faithfully copied. (Assuming the decoding system still exists to make sense of the information)

But now you've lost your distinction. We can model snowflakes.
Mathematically map out all the possibilities in any flake's formation as compared to the way each one actually formed.

BTW I had assumed that snowflakes are based on a huge number of water molecules but it seems that they are basically based on about 100 snow crystals... that makes them a lot easier to simulate than I thought....

Mass of a Snowflake - The Physics Factbook

hypertextbook.com

As far as snowflakes and music boxes go I don't think there are really "invalid" configurations of the regular structure.... in a music box it could have no notes playing - or all of them - or some of them..... but in DNA/RNA it can create different types of cells or viruses - or deformed monstrosities - or not even work at all....

Edit: I guess with a music box there could be annoying and unusual noise.... Which is very subjective....

 

[Keith&Co.]

Anything for which we have a satisfactory godless explanation.

Bill O'Reilly famously scoffed at a guest on his show, saying that science cannot explain tides. The guest stammered a bit in his reply, not because there's much of any difficulty in explaining tides, but because the whole argument was just so fucking ignorant. Orbits, gravity, water-tugging-elves, all the parts of the normal elementary-school unit from the 'Earth's Not Flat' chapter.
So, throwing out stuff that YOU find impressive is not necessarily a compelling argument. As St. Augustine once said:

Often a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other parts of the world, about the motions and orbits of the stars and even their sizes and distances, . . . and this knowledge he holds with certainty from reason and experience. It is thus offensive and disgraceful for an unbeliever to hear a Christian talk nonsense about such things, claiming that what he is saying is based in Scripture. We should do all that we can to avoid such an embarrassing situation, lest the unbeliever see only ignorance in the Christian and laugh to scorn." -- St. Augustine, "De Genesi ad litteram libri duodecim"

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Perhaps another feature of information is that it can be replicated.... Like DNA, RNA, computer information, names and words, and books. If the symbols can be replicated then the information is completely and faithfully copied. (Assuming the decoding system still exists to make sense of the information)

But now you've lost your distinction. We can model snowflakes.
Mathematically map out all the possibilities in any flake's formation as compared to the way each one actually formed.

BTW I had assumed that snowflakes are based on a huge number of water molecules but it seems that they are basically based on about 100 snow crystals... that makes them a lot easier to simulate than I thought....

Mass of a Snowflake - The Physics Factbook

hypertextbook.com

As far as snowflakes and music boxes go I don't think there are really "invalid" configurations of the regular structure.... in a music box it could have no notes playing - or all of them - or some of them..... but in DNA/RNA it can create different types of cells or viruses - or deformed monstrosities - or not even work at all....

So your evidence that it has to be simulated or created is because it barely works at all and is a flawed system? The argument is it can't be natural because it isn't very good and is susceptible to lots of failure?

 

[excreationist]

So your evidence that it has to be simulated or created is because it barely works at all and is a flawed system? The argument is it can't be natural because it isn't very good and is susceptible to lots of failure?

I didn't say it has to be simulated.... in other threads I've said that God isn't obvious and "I think ALL evidence of God and the paranormal can be explained by skeptics as coincidence, delusion, hallucinations, or fraud"
https://www.lifesplayer.com/bible.php
My point is that the information in DNA/RNA is very different from music boxes.... (if that can even be called "information")

 

[Keith&Co.]

My point is that the information in DNA/RNA is very different from music boxes.... (if that can even be called "information")

But neither one is SYMBOLIC information.

 

[excreationist]

My point is that the information in DNA/RNA is very different from music boxes.... (if that can even be called "information")

But neither one is SYMBOLIC information.

Well there's this:

Rethinking the Meaning of Biological Information - Biological Theory

Throughout the history of molecular biology, the primary meaning of biological information has been taken from the image of a word-based linguistic code. I want to argue that the metaphor of such a code does not begin to capture either the variety or the richness of the processes by which...

link.springer.com

....Recognition of this fact leads us to conclude that DNA is both more and less than we thought—more because it carries both symbolic and non-symbolic information and less because accepting that fact undermines its radical distinction from other biological molecules....​

​

The DNA Habitat and its RNA Inhabitants: At the Dawn of RNA Sociology

Most molecular biological concepts derive from physical chemical assumptions about the genetic code that are basically more than 40 years old. Additionally, systems biology, another quantitative approach, investigates the sum of interrelations to obtain ...

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Eventually, continued selective pressure by parasitic replicators that adapted to these enhanced covalent changes led to the emergence of additional symbolic information whose role was no longer operational in an enzymatic sense, but needed to specify network membership.... The emergence of enzymatic nonoperational sequence structures (symbolic) to specify network membership increases evolutionary potentials geometrically not arithmetically....​

​

An Alternative to the RNA World

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

......as the contemporary genetic code expresses chemical properties of the twenty amino acids—size and polarity—that determine how proteins fold into a unique configuration, we can surmise that this symbolic information has been selected continuously throughout evolution from its earliest ancestral versions.....​

​

$5 Million Prize for Origin of Genetic Code

Organizers say knowing how DNA came to be could lead to intelligent, evolving computer code

spectrum.ieee.org

.....How did this scheme for forming and transmitting symbolic information—triplets of nucleotides that encode amino acids—come to be?....​

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https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1308/1308.2107.pdf

....Life originated in the spontaneous creation of symbolic information and its interpretation....​

​

So I'm not sure I should rule out the idea that DNA might somehow include symbolic information....

​

 

[Keith&Co.]

​

So I'm not sure I should rule out the idea that DNA might somehow include symbolic information....

I notice that the first thing done here is to reject the linguistic approach to analyzing biological information. So i wonder if 'symbolic' even means the same thing you've been trying to use the whole time.

 

[Elixir]

Wow. Next time I need to reassure myself that my close-held superstitions are real, remind me to google up an epic wall of shit I barely understand and assemble it into a mighty bulwark against having to acknowledge the vacuity of my argument.

 

[excreationist]

So I'm not sure I should rule out the idea that DNA might somehow include symbolic information....

I notice that the first thing done here is to reject the linguistic approach to analyzing biological information. So i wonder if 'symbolic' even means the same thing you've been trying to use the whole time.

I don't know.... those sources I quoted are a bit too technical for me.... but they seemed somewhat relevant since they are about DNA involving symbolic information....

 

[excreationist]

Wow. Next time I need to reassure myself that my close-held superstitions are real, remind me to google up an epic wall of shit I barely understand and assemble it into a mighty bulwark against having to acknowledge the vacuity of my argument.

I don't think whether DNA contains symbolic information has anything to do with my belief in a possible simulation. I just wanted to point out the possibility that it might involve symbolic information. Also see post #25 where I'm basically saying I don't really have any evidence that would convince skeptics...

 

[Keith&Co.]

I just wanted to point out the possibility that it might involve symbolic information.

It's POSSIBLE that tea leaves involve smbolic information. Cheese curds. Coffee grounds spread scross waxed paper.

Dowsing rods.
That thing about swinging a weight from yarn over a pregnant woman's belly to determine the sex. Or gender, or bathroon they'd use, whatever.

You can maybe symbolic info anywhere, if you're loose with your definitions.
Thst rubber ducky i saw in the clouds that one time. Seemed significant.

There's that guy, used to post on a previous version of the forum, used to ask questions and look at the clock real quick, position of the second hand indicated God's answer. Yes, no, maybe, wind the clock. Last i recall, he was trying to adapt the method to digital...?

 

[Keith&Co.]

So i wonder if 'symbolic' even means the same thing you've been trying to use the whole time.

I don't know.... those sources I quoted are a bit too technical for me.... but they seemed somewhat relevant since they are about DNA involving symbolic information....

Uh....huh. so uou googled and got words you need, without knowing if you were actually undercutting your point?
Anyone remember Dave from Texas?

 

[excreationist]

It's POSSIBLE that tea leaves involve symbolic information. Cheese curds. Coffee grounds spread across waxed paper.

But are there multiple scientific seeming articles saying that?

I don't know.... those sources I quoted are a bit too technical for me.... but they seemed somewhat relevant since they are about DNA involving symbolic information....

Uh....huh. so you googled and got words you need, without knowing if you were actually undercutting your point?
Anyone remember Dave from Texas?

Well they seem to all be saying that DNA can or does have symbolic information.... even if I don't really understand the articles....

 

[Keith&Co.]

It's POSSIBLE that tea leaves involve symbolic information. Cheese curds. Coffee grounds spread across waxed paper.

But are there multiple scientific seeming articles saying that?

I don't know.... those sources I quoted are a bit too technical for me.... but they seemed somewhat relevant since they are about DNA involving symbolic information....

Uh....huh. so you googled and got words you need, without knowing if you were actually undercutting your point?
Anyone remember Dave from Texas?

Well they seem to all be saying that DNA can or does have symbolic information.... even if I don't really understand the articles....

Aa i said, they're redefining the whole framework of biological information. Without comparing their and your definitions of symbolic, or information, or biological information, there's no real way to know if this is helping your case or completely apart from it.

 

[excreationist]

As i said, they're redefining the whole framework of biological information. Without comparing their and your definitions of symbolic, or information, or biological information, there's no real way to know if this is helping your case or completely apart from it.

I agree and I don't plan on trying to do that.

 

[Wiploc]

What would NOT count as evidence of God?​

Nothing counts as evidence of god if the contrary evidence would be just as strong.

- Example: I've seen it argued that if the bible was not full of contractions and absurdities, that would mean it was written by humans. Since humans would clean up that sort of problem, the bible -- according to this argument -- must have actually been written by gods.

But, if the bible wasn't full of contradictions and absurdities, then Christians would argue that its excellence proves that it was made by gods.

Since neither of those arguments is stronger than its opposite, neither is worth anything at all.

- Example: Christians argue that women are (or at least were) less credible than men, so, then, if the bible were fiction it would say that it was men (rather than women) who reported the empty tomb. Therefore -- according to this argument -- the bible must be true since it uses the inferior claim that women reported the empty tomb.

 

[Wiploc]

What would NOT count as evidence of God?​

No argument based on equivocation can be counted as evidence of anything.

- Example: The moral argument's plausibility is based on surreptitiously dancing back and forth between two different meanings of "objective morality."

- Example: The first cause arguments depend on surreptitiously dancing back and forth between different meanings of "universe" and/or "cause" and/or "beginning" and so on.

 

[Wiploc]

What would NOT count as evidence of God?​

No argument counts as evidence of X if the same logic also proves not-X.

- Example: Plantinga's modal cosmological argument purports to prove that gods do exist, but, by using that same logic, we can as easily prove that gods do not exist.

 

[atrib]

An argument that asserts that belief in a creator-god is evidence for existence of a creator-god.

An argument that asserts that a creator-god exists because atheists don't know why the universe exists.

An argument that asserts that the existence of intelligent life is evidence for the existence of a creator-god.

An argument that asserts that a creator-god is necessary to explain the existence of interaction patterns in nature (laws of nature).

An argument that asserts that the thought of a godless universe makes one feel yucky.