DNA: The Language of God?

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10 years ago, medical geneticist Francis S. Collins, wrote a book entitled: “The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief”. That phrase, “The Language of God” was used to refer to DNA. "Collins explains that as a Christian believer, ‘the experience of sequencing the human genome, and uncovering this most remarkable of all texts, was both a stunning scientific achievement and an occasion of worship.’

This thread is following one conversation that ended recently where I asked some questions. Some good answers got started but then we had to stop - so let’s give it another try.
  1. DNA is a language. True or False?
  2. Languages cannot emerge from blind, unintelligent, undirected processes. True or False?
  3. That which does not emerge from a natural, undirected process is transcendent to material nature. True or False?
What do you think?
 
reggieM said:
10 years ago, medical geneticist Francis S. Collins, wrote a book entitled: “The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief”. That phrase, “The Language of God” was used to refer to DNA. "Collins explains that as a Christian believer, ‘the experience of sequencing the human genome, and uncovering this most remarkable of all texts, was both a stunning scientific achievement and an occasion of worship.’

This thread is following one conversation that ended recently where I asked some questions. Some good answers got started but then we had to stop - so let’s give it another try.
  1. DNA is a language. True or False?
  2. Languages cannot emerge from blind, unintelligent, undirected processes. True or False?
  3. That which does not emerge from a natural, undirected process is transcendent to material nature. True or False?
What do you think?
Click to expand...
It’s a naturally evolved means of passing on information. If your reaction to any scientific understanding of how nature works is ‘Wow, God’, then you are going to spend a lot of time walking around with an amazed expression on your face.
 
reggieM said:
… let’s give it another try.
  1. DNA is a language. True or False?
Click to expand...
As Bradski wrote, it is a means of passing on information. In that way, it is like a language, but in other ways it is not. DNA does not communicate ideas from one person to another. It transmits information from one bit of matter to another. Or you might say it propagates order from one bit of matter to another.
  1. Languages cannot emerge from blind, unintelligent, undirected processes. True or False?
Click to expand...
Not sure I agree with this one. It depends on Question 1, what is language? Picking up where I left off, DNA propagates order. Is this a sign of intelligence? Not really. There are other (simpler) natural systems that do that.

Take, for example, quartz, a mineral with a crystal structure that has a twist that may be either “right-handed” or “left-handed.” When a quartz crystal forms from molten quartz, which has no “handedness” whatsoever, the growing crystal serves as a template. If the crystal is right-handed, it causes the disordered liquid to organize and crystallize in the right-handed structure. If the crystal is left-handed, the liquid crystallizes the other way, in the left-handed structure. The crystal also transmits other essential information like the orientation of the crystal.

Is the quartz crystal a language? Most of us would say it is not a language. Does it transmit information? Yes, it transmits handedness and orientation from an organized bit of matter (atoms in the crystal) to disorganized matter (identical atoms in the liquid). Does it point to an intelligent designer? The evidence is inconclusive.

DNA is fundamentally the same. It operates on matter via the same kind of natural forces, predominately electrostatic forces. It acts as a template. It causes disorganized matter to become organized. The only difference is that it DNA transmits more information.
  1. That which does not emerge from a natural, undirected process is transcendent to material nature. True or False?
Click to expand...
Getting back to that word “emerge,” we don’t know exactly how DNA emerged, but it’s not out of the question that it emerged by natural processes. Compared to a left-handed quartz crystal, DNA has far greater complexity, and more steps were involved in its emergence.

This point is difficult for some scientists to accept, but I think it’s entirely plausible that a primitive replication system, only a little more complex than a crystal, began the long process that resulted in life as it exists today.
What do you think?
Click to expand...
I think it’s pretty awesome. As Bradski suggested, there is a lot more in nature that is totally awesome. I think such an awesome nature points to an awesome Creator.
 
reggieM said:
  1. DNA is a language. True or False?
  2. Languages cannot emerge from blind, unintelligent, undirected processes. True or False?
  3. That which does not emerge from a natural, undirected process is transcendent to material nature. True or False?
What do you think?
Click to expand...
Looking at it purely in terms of logic:
  1. False. Calling DNA a language is poetic, but it relies on a very loose definition of what is language and doesn’t bear close inspection.
  2. Unproven. And probably unprovable.
  3. Irrelevant. As DNA is made of material, it has a ‘material nature’ and therefore 3 does not apply.
DNA is amazing stuff, but a lot of nature is too, and there are detailed hypotheses on its history. For instance, this is the kind of thing you’re up against if you want to argue for spontaneous creation as opposed to gradual evolution:

“The first step in the emergence of DNA has been most likely the formation of U-DNA (DNA containing uracil), since ribonucleotide reductases produce dUTP (or dUDP) from UTP (or UDP) and not dTTP from TTP (the latter does not exist in the cell) (fig. 1). Some modern viruses indeed have a U-DNA genome,10 possibly reflecting this first transition step between the RNA and DNA worlds. The selection of the letter T occurred probably in a second step, dTTP being produced in modern cells by the modification of dUMP into dTMP by thymidylate synthases (followed by phosphorylation).11 Interestingly, the same kinase can phosphorylate both dUMP and dTMP.11 In modern cells, dUMP is produced from dUTP by dUTPases, or from dCMP by dCMP deaminases (fig. 1).11 This is another indication that T-DNA originated after U-DNA. In ancient U-DNA cells, dUMP might have been also produced by degradation of U-DNA (fig. 1).” - ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK6360/
 
DNA is a code, like a bird call, it only says one thing. So it really isn’t speaking to us, it is more like a barcode than anthing else. So, not a language.
 
DNA is a code, like a bird call, it only says one thing. So it really isn’t speaking to us, it is more like a barcode than anthing else. So, not a language.

Most life, from amoebas to man have languages, will allow varying degrees of communications. Amoebas can communicate through chemical signals, it’s not intelligent, but it is a language, I cannot think of any life that can’t communicate, even plants.

DNA codes are God’s assembly instructions.
 
Bradski said:
It’s a naturally evolved means of passing on information. If your reaction to any scientific understanding of how nature works is ‘Wow, God’, then you are going to spend a lot of time walking around with an amazed expression on your face.
Click to expand...
I’m actually going to be the better materialist here. Viewed solely as a material process genetics and DNA does not pass on information. Theoretically, a complete explanation of how DNA controls the growth and decay of an animal body is possible. It’s why I don’t care for ID and from what I understand to be Collins’ position. The issue is whether the natural sciences have a coherent view of causation.
 
List of programming languages - Wikipedia

Pascal
Perl
Php
Pl/i
Pl/sql
Prolog
Python
 
inocente said:
. For instance, this is the kind of thing you’re up against if you want to argue for spontaneous creation as opposed to gradual evolution:
Click to expand...
Yes, what I’m up against, quoting from that paper:
As we have seen in this chapter, there is no lack of alternative, and sometimes contradictory, hypotheses.
Click to expand...
There is no lack of imaginary scenarios.

Why not show me a simple language that emerged from a random, undirected process?

You could use a computer simulation - which is granting already some intelligent (name removed by moderator)ut.

Should be simple to produce in a lab, right? I mean, if blind, unitelligent random molecules could do it, why not a randomization software program?
 
DNA is an intricate language, an elaborate design. It could have never spontaneously happened. It proves that God designed this world and everything in it.
 
reggieM said:
Why not show me a simple language that emerged from a random, undirected process?

You could use a computer simulation - which is granting already some intelligent (name removed by moderator)ut.

Should be simple to produce in a lab, right? I mean, if blind, unitelligent random molecules could do it, why not a randomization software program?
Click to expand...
Google’s computers invented their own language undirected. - sputniknews.com/in_depth/201702141050656365-how-google-computers-invented-their-own-language/

But as I said, DNA isn’t a language, so it’s off-topic.
 
reggieM said:
  1. DNA is a language. True or False?
Click to expand...
False. DNA is a chemical. It is no more a language than polyethylene is a language.
  1. Languages cannot emerge from blind, unintelligent, undirected processes. True or False?
Click to expand...
The default answer in science is “we don’t know”. That is the answer to this question.
  1. That which does not emerge from a natural, undirected process is transcendent to material nature. True or False?
Click to expand...
False. Something might emerge from a natural directed process. The path of a stream flowing down a hillside is directed by gravity and the conformation of the ground. The path of a stream is not transcendent to material nature.
What do you think?
Click to expand...
I think your “The” in the thread title limits God to a single language. God has more than one language. See Borges’ “The Writing of the God” for another of God’s languages.

rossum
 
reggieM said:
10 years ago, medical geneticist Francis S. Collins, wrote a book entitled: “The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief”. That phrase, “The Language of God” was used to refer to DNA. "Collins explains that as a Christian believer, ‘the experience of sequencing the human genome, and uncovering this most remarkable of all texts, was both a stunning scientific achievement and an occasion of worship.’

This thread is following one conversation that ended recently where I asked some questions. Some good answers got started but then we had to stop - so let’s give it another try.
  1. DNA is a language. True or False?
  2. Languages cannot emerge from blind, unintelligent, undirected processes. True or False?
  3. That which does not emerge from a natural, undirected process is transcendent to material nature. True or False?
What do you think?
Click to expand...
  1. False. (DNA, RNA, and polypeptides are substances.)
  2. False.
  3. False. (There is the case of natural directed process.)
 
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