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tonyrey
Guest
You are on dangerous ground - if you wish to remain on this forumā¦So are we coming to a disagreement on this issue and just walking away?
I thought we have something going
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lemondiesel
Guest
Awesome! I never thought about it like that!
But if we think in terms of language, can we not argue that language develops over time piece by piece?
Why do you say that? We were having a civil discussion, and he was making points. All I wanted was to understand his post. No need to ban me, even if it is about evolution
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reggieM
Guest
Yes, thatā;s true. Language changes because there is a shared meaning communicated between intelligent minds. One mind transmits meaning to another rational mind through the use of symbols. We agree that the symbols CAT mean a mammal that meows.
New symbols come in ā¦ IOW means āin other wordsā (thatās fairly new) and all the other texting neologisms that we have.
But the language cannot create itself or even change itself. There are minds that create Meaning. Then the symbols carry the meaning because intelligence assigns meaning to them.
The symbols are just shapes. Even a pattern of binary code will not work unless we assign meaning to it.
Another amazing thing is that āmeaningā cannot be found in atoms or molecules. How could non-living matter know what something means?
It has to ādecideā what something means. So, language requires some freedom to create meaning. The fact that you could create symbols and tell me what you think it means (and I could agree) indicates that the language you create is not determined by any physical process. You are a free, intelligent, rational agent.
We can say %^@WW+}< means ā¦ Good conversation (but itās too difficult to write that). And this symbol
means (at least in this sentence), thanks for some great questions and observations.
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lemondiesel
Guest
Language is entirely subjective. It takes an intelligent mind yes, but they are not creating anything in reality with language. Language is one with math and physics, where they do not create reality. It is only meant to interpret it.
DNA however does not need a universal acceptance. It is, and when it changes, our language will change in order to better describe that change. It needs no freedoms or interpretation. DNA is always in the present, but language and this code you mentioned give it a history.
DNA however does not need a universal acceptance. It is, and when it changes, our language will change in order to better describe that change. It needs no freedoms or interpretation. DNA is always in the present, but language and this code you mentioned give it a history.
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buffalo
Guest
Why did you leave out mutations?So are we coming to a disagreement on this issue and just walking away?
I thought we have something going
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lemondiesel
Guest
Where? What?
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reggieM
Guest
I forgot to confirm this ā yes, we do need to avoid a debate on evolution. Thanks.
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buffalo
Guest
move it to the back fence.
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_Locke
Guest
āā¦how wrong it is to use God as a stop-gap for the incompleteness of our knowledge. If in fact the frontiers of knowledge are being pushed further and further back (and that is bound to be the case), then God is being pushed back with them, and is therefore continually in retreat. We are to find God in what we know, not in what we donāt know.ā - Dietrich Bonhoeffer, letter to Eberhard Bethge, 29 May 1944
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reggieM
Guest
If the frontiers of our ignorance are expanding further and further, and that is clearly the case), then God is drawing closer and closer to us and is therefore continually advancing. We find God in admitting how little we know, not in boasting about the wisdom that we pretend to have.
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reggieM
Guest
Agreed.
True, but it needs a receiver and decoder. It controls functions through something like a command-language.
Ok, but I think the biggest problems are with the origin of DNA and also how it could change in time.
With the origin, we could have a chance assembly which gives meaningful code. But meaningful to who?
Two problems ā the chance assembly, and determining meaning.
Chance is very difficult to imagine in this case.
If you had a bunch of letters in the alphabet - letās say aligned with a deck of cards. Then you shuffled the dealt the deck. It would take a very long time to get a meaningful, simple sentence.
But hereās the problem: Meaningful for what?
You got a random sentence, but it doesnāt do anything. It doesnāt tell a story or communicate information to you about the world. Itās just words that happen to work in a single sentence. Now if you created whole paragraphs somehow, even that has to mean something.
So, now we have DNA shuffling the code to create meaning.
But DNA is not intelligent so it wouldnāt know if it had meaningful code or not. Plus, it needs a recipient (cell functions) waiting for meaningful commands.
Itās like a bunch of monkeys on typewriters. Even if you had billions of monkeys typing, and letās imagine they eventually created Shakespeareās Hamlet. The problem is, the monkeys would never know that they had Shakespeare. It takes an intelligent mind to read through all the monkey typing-gibberish to discover the text of Shakespeare in it.
Itās even worse with DNA because mutations would destroy any functional information that it accidentally created if it didnāt have some use at the time. And it wouldnāt have use if it wasnāt complete and functional in a relationship in the cell.
So, the origin and development of DNA code is a problem in that scenario. The most reasonable conclusion is that DNA was created for its function and did not accidentally emerge.
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AntiTheist
Guest
Itās not ādebating evolutionā to point out that this whole āDNA is a languageā nonsense is a poorly-understood argument from analogy.
DNA isnāt communicating information from one mind to another. Itās a pattern of molecules that produce certain results when theyāre put together, but itās not a ālanguageā in any sense except a metaphor, a word-image that compares two unlike things.
This pattern can ā and does ā emerge from natural selection. Selective pressures are responsible for DNA, and thereās absolutely no reason to think that magical beings needed to make it just because we can compare it to a language.
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buffalo
Guest
Linguistics is used to study the DNA language.
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tonyrey
Guest
By āknowledgeā Bonhoeffer meant scientific knowledge. Knowledge of God is found in metascientific facts, in ourselves and others, in philosophy and religion, in beauty and in the Source of all knowledgeā¦
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AntiTheist
Guest
Language and DNA share some common properties ā thatās why youāre able to construct a metaphor that relates them ā but they donāt share the characteristic that makes language a language: conveying information from one mind to another.
It doesnāt do that, and thatās whatās definitional of a ālanguage.ā A pattern, in and of itself, cannot be a language.
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buffalo
Guest
Languages contain patterns, signs and symbolsā¦ Natural patterns do not contain language, signs or symbols.
Languages come from a mind, but they do not need a mind to receive.
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reggieM
Guest
There is software language.
Itās true that language requires an immaterial mind. On that we agree.
Agreed again. Language communicates meaning and/or function.
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AntiTheist
Guest
It requires a mind as a sender and a mind as a receiver.
What mind is DNA designed to communicate meaning to?
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reggieM
Guest
Notice that I said it requires a mind, but not that it can only communicate between minds (since software communicates between machine and function).
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AntiTheist
Guest
The analogy to software assumes the thing that youāre trying to demonstrate (that DNA has a designer).
All examples of human language ā which is what you are comparing DNA to ā are designed to communicate ideas from one mind to another. DNA does not communicate anything ā itās a series of patterns that produce effects.
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