This video conversation takes some interesting twists and turns about theology, new age thought and the possibility of alien beings. And yes, the ultimate question of purpose. (Apologies for scratchy sound on the first video.)

The discussion continues in Video #2. Adam and Eve; the frailties of human beings, and the really big questions. And even a conversation about miracles.

“The New Atheism” has become especially loud and strident since September 11, 2001. Bestselling books like Richard Dawkins’ “The God Delusion” and battles over evolution vs. design in school boards are front page news. It might even appear that 21st century atheism is an unstoppable force.

But there’s another side to the story. The #1 atheist philosopher of the last 50 years, Antony Flew (who died in April 2010 at age 87), announced that he believed in God and wrote a book about his change of views.

There’s huge new information from the Human Genome project that neither the atheists nor intelligent design advocates have ever told you. Even evolution itself screams design as you begin to understand the sophisticated adaptation mechanisms behind it.

Perry Marshall’s presentation features “10 Hard Questions No Atheist Can Answer.” It’s based on his experience on the front lines of these debates for 5+ years. He shares a unique perspective on history, science and the universe. His websites www.cosmicfingerprints.com and www.coffeehousetheology.com get 1 million visitors per year and his famous MP3 “If you can believe this I can prove God exists” is the most controversial talk on the origin of life on the entire Internet.

Perry has applied digital communications theory and Information Technology to build a bulletproof case for design in DNA. His challenge to atheists, “Show me a message that doesn’t come from a mind,” remains unmet for 4 years and counting. His DNA argument is referenced on more than 1,000 websites on the Internet.

The presentation will be recorded and the video will be posted here on this web page. [PENDING]

Symbiogenesis and a Closer Look at Genesis 1 & 2

Presented at the Chicago Chapter of Reasons to Believe in Wheaton, Illinois

Perry Marshall discusses a controversial scientific theory which some say has already replaced Neo-Darwinism. It’s called Symbiogenesis and it’s #1 champion is the late Carl Sagan’s wife, Lynn Margulis, a biologist at the University of Massachusetts.

It was first proposed by a brilliant Russian scientist in 1924; the fact that it was entirely ignored for 50 years in the English speaking world is considered by some to be a major oversight.

In Symbiogenesis, cooperation, rather than competition, is seen as the primary driver of evolution.

Perry will discuss its place among other evolutionary mechanisms and evolution as an engineered process.

Perry Marshall also gives part 2 of a “Biblical Case for Evolution.” He discusses:

• The Hebrew in Genesis 1 & 2
• New questions about the traditional English interpretations of Genesis
• A new meta structure for making interpretive decisions
• Exploring of a range of translation options for the pivotal words in the ancient text
• Stimulating questions about the relationship between science and Bible interpretation

Symbiogenesis Power Point in PDF

Symbiogenesis MP3 audio (35 minutes)

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Genesis 2: A Biblical Case for Evolution Power Point in PDF

Genesis 2: A Biblical Case for Evolution Mp3 audio (49 minutes)

(This is part 2 of a 2 part series. Here’s part 1: “Genesis 1 & A Christian Case for Evolution” Power Point in PDF

“Genesis 1 & A Christian Case for Evolution” MP3 audio)

Before I elaborate on this, some background.

10 years ago I couldn’t have imagined I would become interested in DNA, biology, evolution or any such thing. Biology in high school was b-o-r-i-n-g. Chemistry in college was a hard slog.

I got my degree in Electrical Engineering. Specialized in communications and control systems. Graduated and developed analog circuits. Worked as an acoustical engineer. Designed the speakers in the 1994 Ford Probe, the 1995 Acura Vigor, the 1995 Jeep Cherokee and the 1996 Honda Civic.

Left acoustics & pursued digital communications. Sold embedded networking hardware, software and IC’s in the automation and robotics industry. Fought digital networking standards battles in manufacturing. Wrote an Ethernet book, published by the world’s #1 technical society for process control engineers.

And now here I am discussing DNA, evolution, and telling you about scientific discoveries so new, you can’t buy books about them in the bookstore. I’m loving it.

As an outsider to the “biology industry” I bring a very particular perspective: That of an engineer who’s performed digital network design (very exact), analog circuit design (a quasi-art form), and acoustics (extremely complex and messy).

All industries become incestuous as they age. They resist change. All professions are run by good ol’ boys clubs. In every industry, innovations almost NEVER come from the inside. Novel approaches usually come from outsiders. External innovations are opposed by the old guard because they threaten the status quo.

Bill Gates was a complete outsider to the computer business. Larry and Sergey, founders of Google, were complete foreigners to the search engine game. (Early on, they tried to sell their search technology to Yahoo for $1 million but Yahoo turned them down.)

Fred Smith, founder of Federal Express, was a complete virgin in the shipping industry. Ray Kroc of McDonalds wasn’t a restaurant veteran; he was a milkshake machine salesman.

All these people had an outsiders’ point of view that enabled them to see what insiders were blind to.

Like these men, I am a total outsider in biology. Yet despite the fact that I wouldn’t pass a test on retroviruses or organic chemistry, as an EE I see certain things with crystal clarity that biologists are blind to. One reason is, in Electrical Engineering, theory matches reality better than it does in almost any other engineering discipline.

Examples: In metallurgy, when you predict the failure load of a steel beam, you’re lucky if your guess is within 10%. In chemical engineering, a 5-10% error factor is considered good for many reactions. Civil engineers over-design bridges by 50% to 100% just to be safe.

But a model of an electrical circuit or computer chip is often accurate to within 1% and sometimes 0.01%.

Because you can’t see electricity and shouldn’t touch it, EE is abstract and very mathematical. It’s also rigorous. I can’t tell you how many times in my engineering classes, the professor would be explaining something like, say, the behavior of a semiconductor, and he would derive the calculus equation from scratch.

Of the appliances in your house, which ones work exactly the way they’re supposed to? Your car doesn’t. Your dishwasher doesn’t. Your refrigerator needs new parts every few years. The mechanical stuff is prone to problems.

But your TV does exactly what it’s supposed to, for years. So does your iPod and your Microwave oven and your clock radio and your cell phone.

You can thank an EE for that.

For this reason, EE’s have very high expectations of theoretical models… because the model has to be built and it has to work. Engineers don’t have much tolerance for B.S.

Today:

7 Urban Legends Biologists Believe…. but an Engineer Would Never Tolerate:

1. “Random mutations are usually neutral or harmful but occasionally they confer a benefit to an organism. Natural Selection filters out the harmful mutations, causing species to evolve.”

This is THE central dogma of neo-Darwinism and is allegedly accepted by “virtually all scientists.” You will find it in literally 1,000 textbooks and 10,000 websites.

To the average biologist and to the average man on the street, it sounds perfectly plausible. And I fully understand why people believe this.

But I’m an EE. I know that the information in DNA is a signal. By definition, random mutations are noise.

Telling a communications engineer that adding noise to a signal sometimes create new, useful data structures is like telling a nurse you can occasionally cure a common cold by swallowing rat poison.

This is absurd! You’ll be hard pressed to find any communications engineer who, upon examining this claim, would agree with it. Have you ever had a data glitch on your computer that improved your files? Ever?

There is not a one single principle or practice in engineering that would ever suggest that this is actually true. All the Natural Selection in the world is powerless without a beneficial mutation. And you’ll never get a major benefit from accidental copying errors.

The mutations that drive evolution are systematic and directed, not accidental.

2. “97% of your DNA is junk - an accumulation of evolutionary leftovers from random mutations over millions of years.”

The only reason anyone believes lie #2 is that they believe lie #1. Here’s how any rational person can quickly figure out that #2 is B.S.:

Human DNA holds 750 megabytes of data, the same as a Compact Disc. If 97% of your DNA is junk, that means the 3% that isn’t junk is 22 megabytes. In other words, they’re implying that the entire plan for a human body only takes up 22 megabytes of storage space.

Heck, the “Windows” folder on my PC - the directory that contains most of the Operating System - is 27 gigabytes. Does anyone actually think Microsoft Windows Vista is more sophisticated than the human body? Bill Gates sure doesn’t.

The fact that a plan for an entire human body can even be contained on one CD is nothing short of a miracle of data compression.

Actual fact: DNA is not 3% efficient. It’s more like 1,000% efficient. The same gene can be used in completely different ways by a dozen different processes. The result is a level of data density that software engineers only dream of.

Engineers see profound elegance where biologists see junk.

Which perspective is more in keeping with the aims of science?

3. “You only need 3 things for evolution to occur: heredity, variation and selection.”

Tufts university philosopher and prominent atheist Daniel Dennett famously said this. He would never say this if he had an engineering degree.

If this were true, computer viruses (which have heredity, variation and selection) would mutate all by themselves and develop resistance to anti-virus software. They don’t.

If this were true, the pirated copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of Windows XP or The Eagles’ “Hotel California” that you can buy on the street corner for $2 in China would occasionally be superior to the original. It never is.

If this were true, Bill Gates wouldn’t have to employ 10,000 programmers in Redmond Washington. He would just buy truckloads of computers, add random errors to a billion copies of Windows and filter them through natural selection.

Nobody writes software that way. Nobody. Have you ever wondered why?

Most biologists think evolution just happens automatically. They say all you need is time and a lot of raw materials and it will just happen.

So why don’t computer programs ever evolve by themselves?

They don’t and they never will - not unless they’re programmed to do so. Evolution is not a given; at some level it’s always a design feature. Software programmers will tell you that self-adaptive code is profoundly difficult to write. Never happens by accident.

4. “Biology is nothing more than sophisticated physics and chemistry.”

That’s like saying the Internet is nothing more than sophisticated copper wire and silicon chips.

I’m an e-commerce consultant. I practically live on the Internet. I have conversations with people about the Internet all the time. Nobody I talk to ever describes the Internet that way.

Do you?

You talk about things like email and Google and Facebook. You tell your friend about the Youtube video where the guy goes to every country in the world and does his little dance jig. And the latest gaffe by Sarah Palin. All those things are INFORMATION.

90% of Electrical Engineering is concerned with controlling and processing information. Only a small part of EE is concerned with things like motors and generators and watts and horsepower. Even power equipment is controlled by information.

All the interesting things you do with electricity involve signals or digital codes. Temperature measurement or text messages or a radio transmission.

The SOFTWARE is more interesting than the hardware. So it is with DNA. Chemicals are just the hardware.

Until the biology profession accepts that the real power in biology is in the information - the software and not the chemicals - it will continue to slam into brick walls and put forth evolutionary theories that make wrong predictions.

It will continue to get nowhere in Origin of Life research.

Information never improves by accident. Information evolves only through highly structured processes.

5. “Genetic Algorithms Prove Darwinian Evolution.”

A Genetic Algorithm (GA) is a computer program that modifies code and then evaluates the code against some pre-programmed goal, keeping the winners and discarding the losers. GA’s refine software programs through an evolution-like process.

GA’s are not a be-all-end-all by any means, and they have limited application. But they are useful.

Some years ago Richard Dawkins wrote a software program that took the following garbage text:

WDLTMNLT DTJBKWIRZREZLMQCO P

After only 43 iterations, by deleting characters it didn’t want, the program reached its pre-programmed goal:

METHINKS IT IS LIKE A WEASEL

Traditional Darwinian evolution by definition has no goals, just blind natural selection. Dawkins’ program has a definite goal and is programmed to reach it. This program has nothing to do with formal Darwinian evolution. It’s intelligent evolution.

Every single Genetic Algorithm I’ve ever seen, no matter how simple or complicated, only works if it has pre-programmed goals. Which requires both a program and objectives. I’ve never seen a GA that actually mirrored Darwinian Evolution. They always sneak in some element of design.

Which only adds to the reasons why the Neo-Darwinian theory of purposeless random events is wrong. Real world evolution is pre-programmed and has goals of some sort pre-loaded. I’ve never seen an exception. This is no different than computer programs that evolve.

6. “The human eye is a pathetic design. It’s got a big blind spot and the ‘wires’ are installed backwards.”

There are many, many variations on this argument. It’s just another version of “Junk DNA.”

When I was a manufacturing production manager, I had to produce an indicator lamp assembly for a piece of equipment. The design had a light bulb and 2 identical resistors, which I thought were stupid. I suggested that we replace the 2 resistors with one resistor of twice the value. This would save money and space. I told the customer the design was obviously lousy.

The engineer got angry and almost took his business elsewhere. Then my boss spent 30 minutes lecturing me. He reminded me that my job was to put the customers’ product into production, not insult him with my warped critique of his design skills.

What I didn’t know was that 600 volts would arc across one resistor, but not across two. A second, “redundant” resistor was an elegant way to solve that problem and it only cost 2 cents.

I learned the hard way that when you criticize a design, you may have a very incomplete picture of the many constraints the designer has to work within.

Designs always have delicate tradeoffs. Some have amazing performance but are extremely difficult to manufacture. Sometimes a minor change in material would make a huge improvement but the material is unavailable. Sometimes you have to make a compromise between 15 competing priorities. Sometimes people have no appreciation for how difficult that maze is to navigate.

I am not saying that there are no sub-optimal designs in biology - I’m sure there are lots of sub-optimal designs. Furthermore I do believe that life followed an evolutionary process and many designs are “best guesses” engineered by the organism’s ancestors.

But human beings must be very careful to not proudly assert that we could ‘obviously do better.’ We don’t know that. We do not understand what’s involved in designing an eye because we’ve never built one.

My friend, if you lose your eye, there’s not a single arrogant scientist in the world who can build you a new one. Especially not the scientists who try to tell you why the design of the eye is “pathetic.”

If I were selecting an eye surgeon, I’d look for one who has deep respect for the eye, not disdain for it. How about you?

Every engineer knows that you never truly know how something works until you can build it. Merely taking it apart is not enough. Until we can DESIGN eyes for ourselves, we must be very cautious about what we say. The scientist must ALWAYS be humble in the face of nature and you should be wary of anyone who is not.

7. “There is no such thing as purpose in nature. There is only the appearance of purpose.”

“Teleology” is a scientific term which is defined as ‘purpose in nature.’ Atheism denies teleology in the universe. For this reason some biologists have forbidden their students to use purposeful language.

In 1974 Ernst Mayr illustrated it like this:

1. “The Wood Thrush migrates in the fall in order to escape the inclemency of the weather and the food shortages of the northern climates.”

2. “The Wood Thrush migrates in the fall and thereby escapes the inclemency of the weather and the food shortages of the northern climates.”

Statement #1 is purposeful, statement #2 is not. Mayr does fancy footwork in order to avoid reference to design in biology. (It also converts all of his writing to colorless passive sentences. Any good writer will tell you passive language is a sign of mushy thinking.)

The famous biologist JBS Haldane joked, “Teleology is like a mistress to a biologist: he cannot live without her but he’s unwilling to be seen with her in public.”

Everything in biology is purposeful. Which is precisely why biology is fundamentally different than chemistry. Chemicals have no purpose. Organisms do. You cannot formulate a coherent description of life if you deny purpose.

For proof of this, look no further than the genetic code. Every codon in DNA maps to an amino acid that it is SUPPOSED TO make - but an error is possible. It is not possible to even talk about any code at all without acknowledging purpose. Purpose is absolutely implicit in every strand of DNA in every organism in the world.

In his book “Perceptual Control Theory,” William Powers explains that the study of any goal-directed (control feedback) system is fundamentally different than the study of rocks or chemicals or magnetic fields or anything purely physical. The failure to acknowledge this has wreaked all kinds of havoc in science for 150 years.

Even something as simple as a thermostat cannot be understood if you see it as only an assembly of molecules. A thermostat is programmed to hold your room at a certain temperature. The thermostat’s purpose can only be understood from a top-down point of view. It has a goal.

In Electrical Engineering, the top-down nature of information is described by something we call the OSI “7 Layer Model.” Simplified explanation: The 7 Layer model says that in your computer, there’s an Ethernet cable that connects you to the Internet. The copper wire and the voltage on that wire is Layer 1 - the “physical layer.”

Layer 2 is is the 1’s and 0’s that voltage represents. Layers 3, 4, 5 and 6 are the operating system and layer 7 is your spreadsheet or email program or web browser, the “application layer.”

When you send me an email, information is encoded from the top down and sent through your Ethernet cable.

When I receive your email, information is decoded from the bottom up starting with the signal on the cable, and I read your email on my screen.

ALL information is organized this way - in a top-down hierarchy. The wire has its purpose. The 1’s and 0’s have their purpose. The operating system has a purpose, my email program has a purpose and your message has a purpose.

You cannot deny purpose in computers or biology without immediately contradicting yourself 2 minutes later. Even a person who denies purpose is purposefully denying it.

Everything I just told you, I absolutely know to be true as a result of my education and experience as an engineer. Which is why I’m willing to make ballsy proclamations like “Darwinism as we currently know it is going to crumble in the next 2-5 years.”

Yes, I know that might sound ridiculous. Some people scoff at that.

But people scoffed at the idea that communism would fall. They were quick to remind you that every time someone tried to cross the Berlin Wall, they got shot by the guards in the tower.

But then one day someone made it across and nobody opened fire. Then another. Then another. It didn’t take long before that wall became rubble. The fall of communism was surprisingly swift and thorough.

Just a few years ago, people mocked the idea that real estate prices would stop rising. But those who had a deep understanding of the inside story of both of those industries saw the cracks forming. (My friend Nathan, who was a mortgage broker at the time, tells me about stacks of paper being sold, that no sane investor would touch with a 10 foot pole.)

Darwinism as we know it CANNOT stand under the weight of 21st century DNA research. It’s impossible. Because I’ve read the literature. Amazon is absolutely littered with books written from every imaginable point of view, both religious and non-religious, pointing to the creaking, groaning edifice of Neo-Darwinism.

It is inevitable that it will fall. And it’s not going to be long.

It will be replaced by an algorithmic model of Evolution.

BOLD HYPOTHESIS: When Biologists accept what Electrical Engineers know about information, a whole bunch of problems in biology will be solved:

1. The random mutation theory will be discarded. It will be replaced with Transposition, Natural Genetic Engineering, Horizontal Gene Transfer and Genome Doubling. Suddenly evolution will make sense because it is understood as an engineered process not random accident.

2. We’ll discover that what was originally thought to be junk DNA is actually the heart of the most sophisticated database format ever devised.

3a. Evolution will not be taken for granted but deeply appreciated as an utterly ingenious mechanism, pre-programmed into living things. As software engineers replicate the evolutionary algorithm in computer programs, we’ll achieve huge breakthroughs in Artificial Intelligence.

3b: Evolution is orchestrated at a very high level within the organism. It is controlled by a mechanism that is currently poorly understood. This mechanism is beautifully efficient, elegant, fractal, and follows a very exact mathematical protocol. Bioninformatics will become the most rigorous discipline in engineering. The ‘code’ of this protocol will be cracked because of the Human Genome Project and the public availability of DNA sequences. This discovery will lay the foundation of an entire new branch of Computer Science in the 21st century.

4. The “Physics and Chemistry” paradigm of biology will be replaced with a “Bioinformatics” paradigm. Evolution and the origin of life theories will make much more successful predictions.

5. Neo-Darwinism will be discarded because biologists will recognize that biological evolution is just like Genetic Algorithms: It employs pre-programmed goals and educated guesses, not random chance.

6. Rather than assuming designs in biology are “pathetic” or “stupid” we’ll discover deeper reasons for why organisms are the way they are. And greater insights into the subtlety of living things.

7. Everything in biology makes sense once you understand that every single one of the 5 million trillion trillion cells on earth is purposeful and intentional and the original cells were designed to evolve and adapt.

Finally I would like to suggest that there is nothing in the world that can teach us more about digital communications and software programming than DNA. DNA is an absolute gold mine, a treasure trove of insights of data storage, error correction, software architecture, robust design and fractal data compression. Every Electrical Engineer and Computer Science major should study it intensively.

And there is much we engineers can learn from the biologists - because even the simplest living thing is more elegant than the greatest man-made supercomputer. As Engineers and Biologists begin to talk to each other, the 21st century will be amazing indeed.

Perry Marshall

P.S.: Innovations almost always come from outsiders. This means that those who read widely and embrace multiple disciplines - pockets of humanity that don’t normally talk to each other - can enjoy long and prosperous careers as innovators.

The watchword of 21st century biology will be “Interdisciplinary” - the great mysteries will be solved by people who bring the expertise of other fields to bear on the biggest questions in science.

My challenge to you: Make a deliberate decision to step outside of your normal and familiar environment and innovate. The world will reward you for it.

A modern literal interpretation of Genesis 1 matches modern cosmology, geology and the fossil record… exactly.

As we read this chapter together, I would like to make three simple assumptions:

1) The events are described as they appear from the surface of the earth starting with verse 2.

2) We’re going to assume “day” is a period of time, not 24 hours. The Hebrew word for day (”yom”) has a variety of meanings in Genesis. A “day” can be a million or even a billion years.

3) Living creatures in verse 24 are “livestock” - not all land animals, but advanced mammals.

If we had to make obtuse, complex assumptions in order to make this fit, we would have a serious problem. But our assumptions are simple, even elegant. This poetic 3500 year old text matches modern science exactly.

As little as 100 years ago, the prevailing scientific view disagreed with Genesis 1 (the “steady state” theory of the universe was in vogue). Genesis produced a testable hypothesis. Since then, astronomy, geology and biology have shown Genesis was right and the science of the time was wrong.

No other ancient text, scripture or religious tradition has a creation story that even comes close to Genesis in its accuracy. The Jewish scriptures compete admirably in the marketplace of ideas in the 21st century.

How did a bunch of nomads roaming around in the desert in 1500 BC get this sequence of events exactly right? I submit to you it’s because God told his prophets what He did.

Elsewhere on this site I make an bold case that living things have a Designer. I argue that evolution is not random or accidental, but an engineered process. But it’s the remarkable accuracy of Genesis that persuades me to be a Christian and not an agnostic or deist.

Augustine said, “God wrote two books: The Bible and the book of Nature.” It’s important to acknowledge that modern science also informs our interpretation of Genesis. Each tells us about the other.

In an upcoming post I’ll look into Genesis 2 and the origin of man and woman.

I invite you to listen to Hugh Ross’s lecture “New Scientific Evidence for the Existence of God” where he explores the history of Big Bang science and its relation to Genesis in much greater detail.

Perry Marshall

He says:

“The problem is that for every great argument that you make, there are 3 that can be made AGAINST the existence of God. There will really be no way to end this debate EVER. Well, maybe if God one day communicates with us in a non-symbolic way….”

I reply:

“OK, so let’s hear those other arguments AGAINST the existence of God.”

And he wrote me back with a great set of questions.

Here are his questions - with a video response from me to each one:

SittingOnTheFence: First of all, I would like you to know a little bit about me. I’m not your typical furious guy who is apparently angry with the world, like some of those you argued against at Infidels.

I consider myself to be actually a calm guy, with a cool demeanor.  Obviously, objectivity is rarely achieved when one speaks about oneself,  but I’m trying my best to describe how I deal with debates.

Even though I’m very passionate, I rarely get mad or angry. Talking about  these topics actually fuels my life and entertains me, so I would never  try to engage into something that could spike my hormones for the  worse.

Because of sites like yours and some others,  I’m NOT an atheist. I don’t discard the existence of God, even though I’ll admit I incline towards his non-existence.

However, there are many things that just don’t fit for me.

I must admit that most of the arguments I am going to present here are  simply off the top of my head (as I’m sure I could come up with many more later on).

I also admit that many of these arguments are of a philosophical nature, rather than a scientific one, since trying to explain the non-belief in God  through science can be virtually impossible.

Since I haven’t had the time to surf through all of your site, I know these points could very possibly have been made before, but if you are kind, you could give some answers.

Anyway, here are some:

1-

If God created DNA, and you believe in the classic view of design, then that ultimately and inevitably leads to the following question.

Who designed God?

I once read on a Christian booklet that if you watch a car, you would  quickly come to the conclusion that the car didn’t make itself. It would seem absurd to think that the engine and all the complex things that a car is made of to make it start and run could possibly be arranged in such  amazing order just by chance or “luck”.

That seems like a pretty fair argument, until they tell you that God was NOT designed. If a superintelligence made everything, was that Intelligence always there??

Would it be more reasonable to think that a vastly more complex being like God was “always there”, but not a car?

This leads to an infinite regress of causes. This in turn, implies that it  is not that absurd to say that DNA “made itself” from evolution. This  also perpetuates the enigma of the “how”.

Atheists say the Big Bang came out of a singularity, but can not explain why energy, matter and time had to “exist” in the first place. They cannot answer where those forces came from, or why those forces  always existed at one single point.

It is just as perplexing to think why God was always there. Nothing had to  be nowhere at no time in the first place.  This is the “crazy inducing” enigma that NOBODY can even attempt to solve.

My Response:

I explore this concept further at Incompleteness.

Also see http://www.cosmicfingerprints.com/blog/faq

2-

One of the atheists told you something that may be valid. He said that since you requested one example of a naturally ocurring code, he told you it was DNA.

Since DNA is a code, and it is naturally ocurring, a guy can revert your argument and say that DNA is a prime example of a naturally occurring code, and the ONLY one at that.

My Response:

3-

You said that snowflakes, tornadoes and hurricanes are examples of PATTERNS.

Why an omnipotent being like God would make forces that cause disastrous patterns like hurricanes and tornadoes??  Why earthquakes??

I can understand the old argument that disease , death and most of the world problems occur because of men’s own fault, but NOT this. Why make things that only serve to destroy things?

My Response:

Also see: Evil and Suffering

4-

I am assuming that Christianity must be based on a holy book to know the purposes of God. That Holy Book is the Bible.

If God gave us the Bible to be the prime example of his testimony,  why would he make it so difficult to understand?? The Bible is often written in riddles.

This has lead to a lot of interpretations, which in turn have caused the spreading of NUMEROUS protestant religions.

Even if you tell me that the Bible is CLEAR and straightforward “when  you read it with faith”, you know in your heart it isn’t for most of the  people.

Why would God deliver his message through such a dense work?

Most people don’t like to read that much, except for the stuff they like.  Why would he use that method and not speak himself loud and clear so everyone can hear him?

My Response:

5-

You may say that those who don’t like to read can always go to Church, or that most likely somebody has knocked the door of that person to offer speeches about God.

What about all of the people in the world that haven’t received the Lord’s message yet?? Are they guilty for not having heard of God?

Even when missionaries go to third world countries and marginated places  to spread the Word, there are simply too many people who are NOT reached.  How does God communicate with those people?

My Response:

Also see: “All those heathens are gonna burn in hell”

6-

What can you tell me about all the different religions in the world.

Which one is right?

What right do I have to say that Buddhism is wrong?

If you were born in India, you would most likely practice Hinduism.  What would you be guilty of?

If there is only ONE GOD, then I suppose he would firmly make clear which  is the right path.

Considering that there are so many religions, and other  holy books, how could I possibly know the purposes and the wishes of  that God?

My Response:

Also see: http://www.cosmicfingerprints.com/blog/faq/#christian

7-

Now, starting from the premise that the Bible is literal, clear and easy to read, let’s take a look.

The Bible says God really planned men to be perfect, so they could  live in peace and love.

If he really wanted that, why did he put the “forbidden fruit” on that tree??  Many Christians put the blame on Satan disguised as a snake, because of the persuasion.

But the truth is, if no forbidden fruit was ever put on that tree, men would  not have sinned.

What possible explanation could be made for that? That’s like saying, I want  you to be my friend, but at the very start of that friendship, I deliberatly put  obstacles to that friendship.

My Response:

8-

The Bible tells stories about Sea Separations, miracles, ardent bushes, plagues, dreams that tell the future, big floods and other extraordinary phenomena.

Why does nothing of that happens today? Why did all of that  extravaganza (Mana, rain of sulfur and fire, etc.). only happened at that time and not even a hint of that now?

That’s it for now….I would like to read your answers.

My Response:

Also see: http://www.coffeehousetheology.com/miracles/

Thanks, Mr. SittingOnTheFence. Excellent questions.

Perry Marshall

The Berlin Wall, in 1986 (photos courtesy Wikipedia)

The Berlin Wall in East Germany fell on November 9, 1989, after 28 years of darkness. When the dominoes of communism began to fall, the speed at which they tumbled was amazing.

Today, traditional Darwinism is in the same place in 2010 as communism was in 1986. It’s wheezing like a dying animal. Flailing wildly. Draining limited resources defending itself against attackers. It’s barely able to feed its own people, let alone advance useful scientific theories of its own.

Please understand: I am an advocate of biological evolution. I don’t believe that God beamed complete Zebras from heaven down to the savanna, Star-Trek style. I hypothesize they came from an earlier ancestor through a process that we can study and learn from. I cast my vote for Common Descent.

Furthermore, Charles Darwin is to be commended for formulating an early concept of Common Descent. I think the mechanism of evolution is an utterly fascinating scientific process that well deserves our close study. The question of how evolution works is the 2nd biggest question in science. Just behind the origin of life, which is #1.

As we begin to solve the evolution question *for real*, we’ll also crack the code on artificial intelligence. Information technology will leap forward at an unprecedented pace. All we must do is take our cues from biology and coveted secrets of technological advancement await us, literally right under our noses.

But my friend, Darwinism is NOT the only theory of how evolution works! It’s just the loudest one. And it’s fracturing badly. There is no theory in the history of science that has more holes, problems or detractors than Neo-Darwinism. It’s the most troubled theory in all of science.

Here in Chicago there’s an activist group called The Chicago Northshore Darwin’s Bulldogs. I’ve sparred with them on multiple occasions. I often joke that Darwin is the only scientist that needs bulldogs. All the other scientists can fend for themselves just fine, thank you very much.

Darwinism in 2010 is in sad shape. It’s about to shatter. The wall is about to come down.

The best evidence for this comes from a most curious place: The Amazon reviews of Stephen Meyer’s recent book “Signature in the Cell.” This is a superb text, it’s footnoted with incredible thoroughness. It is remarkably readable considering the depth of its subject material.

It’s also quite popular: Today, in all of Amazon it’s ranked #1,110. Remarkable sales for such a technical book.

It analyzes the cell from an information systems perspective, not unlike the approach I use here. It concludes that random processes do not describe the operation of cellular machinery. Meyer shows that a design paradigm is in fact scientific and that it makes successful, testable predictions.

This book is currently the subject of a book review war on Amazon. I write this today, there are 188 reviews. 140 5-star reviews, 16 2-, 3- or 4-star, and 32 1-star. People either love this book or hate it.

You’ll glean much about the current sad state of Darwnism by reading the 1-star reviews.

You’ll find that many of the 1-star reviews are pure vandalism. So far more than 60 have been deleted by Amazon’s editorial staff. Most of the 1-star reviews are bitter slams against the author and tirades about the Intelligent Design movement. Read these reviews and decide for yourself how little content they contain on what the book actually says.

Contrast this to many of the positive reviews which discuss the contents of the book in detail.

When all opponents can do is rail about the politics of ID and prattle on about what a waste of time this book is, you tend to become rather suspicious.

However…. a handful 1-star reviews are a welcome exception to this. They do challenge the actual content. One such review is by K. M. Sternberg and deserves comment.

Sternberg says:

“There is a phenomenon known as pareidolia, “The tendency to interpret a vague stimulus as something known to the viewer.” Pareidolia is when we see faces in clouds, or “evil” in the tragic path of a tornado. Meyer’s book is an exercise in pareidolia: the classic “machinery” of cellular cilia, the “computer program” of DNA. He’s appealing to our sense that anything complicated needs human-like interviention, but unless you’re going to buy into the idea that we’d fall apart if angels stopped holding us together, the line between “natural” emergence and the need for divine intervention is tragically fuzzy. Meyer’s book isn’t science, it’s wishful thinking. (It’s also hubris; Meyer’s arguing that, if there’s a God, he and his fellows at the DI can tell us what he was thinking. I suggest anyone who thinks that way go re-read the Book of Job, especially Job 38:4-41.)”

Thank you Mr. Sternberg for finally contributing a good 1-star review to this discussion. There is a LOT that we can unpack from your short paragraph.

The pattern in DNA is not a “vague stimulus.” DNA is a literal code with a 4-letter alphabet, not a figurative one. Thus the term “genetic code” is a proper scientific term. Books and papers discussing linguistics and universal grammars in DNA are plentiful.

This was my epiphany 5 years ago when I began studying evolution. I had written an Ethernet book and spent 10 years in computer networking. I suddenly discovered that everything I knew about 1’s and 0’s, and all of Claude Shannon’s work, applied to the pattern in DNA. Which is why there are scientific journals such as The Journal of Bioinformatics and Computational Biology published by World Scientific.

If Mr. Sternberg was right, this silly journal could not exist. All self-respecting biologists would instruct those ignorant engineers to mind their own business and stop meddling in DNA.

Mr. Sternberg, please write to the journal and inform them that their journal exists purely because of wishful thinking, ignorance and “pareidolia.” Please inform them that DNA only has the appearance of processing and storing information. Let them know that all that DNA “code” is really just a product of their over-stimulated binary imaginations. Tell them that they might as well be telling us that clouds look like sheep.

Mr. Sternberg, I invite you to come to my blog and post the reply you receive from them.

Hubert Yockey addressed this exact question when he said, “Information, transcription, translation, code, redundancy, synonymous, messenger, editing, and proofreading are all appropriate terms in biology. They take their meaning from information theory (Shannon, 1948) and are not synonyms, metaphors, or analogies.” This is from his book “Information Theory, Evolution and the Origin of Life” (Cambridge University Press, 2005).

Yockey is the #1 living authority on information theory in biology. He is not a creationist, he’s an evolutionist. He’s not pushing a religious agenda. Cambridge University Press is not the mouthpiece for some Intelligent Design committee. DNA really is a digital code. It really does contain instructions. It’s not just our imagination.

Stephen Meyer is not suggesting that we’d all fall apart if angels stopped holding us together. That statement shows that Mr. Sternberg is not interested in understanding what Meyer is saying.

And finally, the entire field of theology is predicated on the idea that if there is a God, we CAN know at least something about what He is thinking. Scientists of no less stature than Isaac Newton regarded their scientific work as an act of worship, revealing the mind of God. And yes, while one of the main points about the book of Job is that God does not tell us everything He is thinking, He does tell us some things. That’s why we have the book of Job in the first place.

I know all too well that the typical Darwinian response to information theory is to say, “WHOA, wait a minute, don’t be so quick to apply those computer engineering metaphors to DNA!”

Which is like saying, “Slow down there, boy, don’t you go comparing this to things we actually understand. Let’s keep this DNA thing a mystery. Otherwise we might reach conclusions that are not compatible with atheism.”

Because of materialism and “evolution by random accident,” 30 years of precious time has been squandered. Investigation has been resisted because of the “Junk DNA” theory which is now discredited. If you look closely, you find that at every point, “Evolution by randomness” has vigorously opposed scientific inquiry, even as it pretends to endorse it.

Evolution is not driven by randomness. It’s driven by a fantastically sophisticated Mutation Algorithm. Cells employ a built-in program which engineers re-arrangement of Mobile Genetic Elements (as observed by McClintock and Shapiro).  Genes and Chromosomes are re-arranged in a fantastically beautiful process which produces useful adaptations and new species.

The Mutation Algorithm tests design options like blades on a Swiss army knife. DNA has a huge “bag of tricks” and is able to mix and match combinations of eyes, feet and claws, joints, digits, hair, skin and fur colors and patterns, switching out different “blades” as environments change.

It builds animals on a common chassis of head, spine, heart, lungs, stomach and limbs. It ferociously defends this core chassis from being corrupted by random mutations, while switching out different variables in the head, spine, heart etc.

Darwinism is not scientific. Why? because it appeals to randomness instead of presuming underlying order. Explanation by accident is not science. It’s anti-science.

But SCIENTIFIC theories of evolution postulate that an intentional program directs the development of living things. Towards a goal of occupying every imaginable ecological niche. Of filling the earth with life and beauty.

Today, I make a bold prediction.

The “Berlin Wall” of Darwinism will crack in 2013. (I estimate we’ve got about 3 more years to go before this can realistically happen.)

The event will be triggered by some “Deep Throat” scientist who has grown sick and tired of the shell games and politics and charades. He is perhaps retired and no longer fears having his career trashed. He will step forward and speak the truth.

He will publish emails and committee notes and recordings of secret meetings. He’ll tell of organized efforts to rig scientific data. Campaigns to malign skilled researchers, to prevent papers from being published, to halt important research from being seen. He’ll report missions to trash the careers of people who publish work that peers into the design process.

He’ll name university presidents, science journal editors, research teams and grant committees. All with an agenda of suppressing legitimate scientific data.

There have been smaller skirmishes of this kind already. But in times past, the retribution from the Old Guard was so swift, so decisive, that one dared not oppose it. This one will trigger a symphony of reports of censorship from across academia. Reports so loud they cannot be ignored.

This revelation will initially be shunned by the mainstream press. A snarl of protest will arise from the Old Guard. But newspapers are dying and most people don’t trust the media anyway. By 2013 the press will be so emaciated, there will be nothing left but a dry husk. The blogosphere will go wild and an entire branch of the formerly trusted scientific community will be discredited.

This will be a major step in evolving the news media beyond its current, calcified form. Most newspapers will become extinct.

Once the dust settles, a new channel will be open for disseminating scientific research that is allowed to assume purpose and teleology in living things. There will be a “Cambrian Explosion” of new research in the genome, in Artificial Intelligence, and in the development of information storage and communication systems.

This gravesite recognizes the lives lost by those attempting to cross the Berlin Wall. Spraypainted on the wall are the words, "The wall will fall. Beliefs become reality."

The next decade holds wonderful new possibilities.

In the late ’90s I worked closely with a German communication software company near Frankfurt. I traveled there and spent many hours having conversations and beers with the owner and the employees. They told me stories of the aftermath of the Berlin Wall coming down. And hardships of integrating workers from East Germany into the Western economy and work ethic.

This West German business owner explained to me that East German workers over the age of 40 were nearly useless. They had spent so long in the docile, uninspired, toxic environment of communism that they were unable to cultivate new habits.

On the other hand, my German friend said, the 20-somethings were eager to learn, to re-tool, and made great workers.

I predict we will see a similar challenge to biology. It’s going to take a long time to heal the profession of its materialistic bias. And, I mince no words, its intellectual laziness. I am still dumbfounded that a theory like “Junk DNA” could have ever been allowed to circulate. It speaks of a woefully anti-scientific intellectual prison. The men who advanced that theory should be stripped of their credentials and ejected from the academy.

The Old Guard may never change. Fortunately, most researchers in the Human Genome Project, genetic engineering and bio-medicine do not actually act as though they believe biology is purposeless and random. They may even say it is, but in actual practice they assume biology wants to do X, they want it to do Y. They figure out what they need to change to get the result they want.

West Germans curiously peer at East German border guards through a hole in the wall

Isn’t it amazing how practical people get when they need to accomplish something productive and get a paycheck?

My friend, not everyone in biology agrees with the Darwinian Dogma. And you don’t need to either, in order to fully embrace science.

Biology is as biology does. It IS purposeful because it acts purposeful. DNA IS a code because it acts like a code.

Countless scientific careers have died in efforts to breach the Darwinian Wall. But this wall will not stand forever.

In June 1987, president Regan had these words for the leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev:

“We welcome change and openness; for we believe that freedom and security go together, that the advance of human liberty can only strengthen the cause of world peace. There is one sign the Soviets can make that would be unmistakable, that would advance dramatically the cause of freedom and peace. General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization, come here to this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”

May the truth be made known.

Perry Marshall

In 1931, Kurt Gödel delivered a devastating blow to the mathematicians of his time

In 1931, the young mathematician Kurt Gödel made a landmark discovery, as powerful as anything Albert Einstein developed.

In one salvo, he completely demolished an entire class of scientific theories.

Gödel’s discovery not only applies to mathematics but literally all branches of science, logic and human knowledge. It has earth-shattering implications.

Oddly, few people know anything about it.

Allow me to tell you the story.

Mathematicians love proofs. They were hot and bothered for centuries, because they were unable to PROVE some of the things they knew were true.

So for example if you studied high school Geometry, you’ve done the exercises where you prove all kinds of things about triangles based on a set of theorems.

That high school geometry book is built on Euclid’s five postulates. Everyone knows the postulates are true, but in 2500 years nobody’s figured out a way to prove them.

Yes, it does seem perfectly “obvious” that a line can be extended infinitely in both directions, but no one has been able to PROVE that. We can only demonstrate that Euclid’s postulates are a reasonable, and in fact necessary, set of 5 assumptions.

Towering mathematical geniuses were frustrated for 2000+ years because they couldn’t prove all their theorems. There were so many things that were “obviously true,” but nobody could find a way to prove them.

In the early 1900’s, however, a tremendous wave of optimism swept through mathematical circles. The most brilliant mathematicians in the world (like Bertrand Russell, David Hilbert and Ludwig Wittgenstein) became convinced that they were rapidly closing in on a final synthesis.

A unifying “Theory of Everything” that would finally nail down all the loose ends. Mathematics would be complete, bulletproof, airtight, triumphant.

In 1931 this young Austrian mathematician, Kurt Gödel, published a paper that once and for all PROVED that a single Theory Of Everything is actually impossible. He proved they would never prove everything. (Yeah I know, it sounds a little odd, doesn’t it?)

Gödel’s discovery was called “The Incompleteness Theorem.”

If you’ll give me just a few minutes, I’ll explain what it says, how Gödel proved it, and what it means - in plain, simple English that anyone can understand.

Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem says:

“Anything you can draw a circle around cannot explain itself without referring to something outside the circle - something you have to assume but cannot prove.”

You can draw a circle around all of the concepts in your high school geometry book. But they’re all built on Euclid’s 5 postulates which we know are true but cannot be proven. Those 5 postulates are outside the book, outside the circle.

You can draw a circle around a bicycle. But the existence of that bicycle relies on a factory that is outside that circle. The bicycle cannot explain itself.

You can draw the circle around a bicycle factory. But that factory likewise relies on other things outside the factory.

Gödel proved that there are ALWAYS more things that are true than you can prove. Any system of logic or numbers that mathematicians ever came up with will always rest on at least a few unprovable assumptions.

Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem applies not just to math, but to everything that is subject to the laws of logic. Everything that you can count or calculate. Incompleteness is true in math; it’s equally true in science or language and philosophy.

Gödel created his proof by starting with “The Liar’s Paradox” — which is the statement

“I am lying.”

“I am lying” is self-contradictory, since if it’s true, I’m not a liar, and it’s false; and if it’s false, I am a liar, so it’s true.

Gödel, in one of the most ingenious moves in the history of math, converted this Liar’s Paradox into a mathematical formula. He proved that no statement can prove its own truth.

You always need an outside reference point.

The Incompleteness Theorem was a devastating blow to the “positivists” of the time. They insisted that literally anything you could not measure or prove was nonsense. He showed that their positivism was nonsense.

Gödel proved his theorem in black and white and nobody could argue with his logic. Yet some of his fellow mathematicians went to their graves in denial, believing that somehow or another Gödel must surely be wrong.

He wasn’t wrong. It was really true. There are more things that are true than you can prove.

A “theory of everything” - whether in math, or physics, or philosophy - will never be found.  Because it is mathematically impossible.

OK, so what does this really mean? Why is this super-important, and not just an interesting geek factoid?

Here’s what it means:

• Faith and Reason are not enemies. In fact, the exact opposite is true! One is absolutely necessary for the other to exist. All reasoning ultimately traces back to faith in something that you cannot prove.
• All closed systems depend on something outside the system.
• You can always draw a bigger circle but there will still be something outside the circle.

Reasoning inward from a larger circle to a smaller circle (from “all things” to “some things”) is deductive reasoning.

Example of a deductive reasoning:

1.    All men are mortal
2.    Socrates is a man
3.    Therefore Socrates is mortal

Reasoning outward from a smaller circle to a larger circle (from “some things” to “all things”) is inductive reasoning.

Examples of inductive reasoning:

1. All the men I know are mortal
2. Therefore all men are mortal

1. When I let go of objects, they fall
2. Therefore there is a law of gravity that governs all falling objects

Notice than when you move from the smaller circle to the larger circle, you have to make assumptions that you cannot 100% prove.

For example you cannot PROVE gravity will always be consistent at all times. You can only observe that it’s consistently true every time.

Nearly all scientific laws are based on inductive reasoning. All of science rests on an assumption that the universe is orderly, logical and mathematical based on fixed discoverable laws.

You cannot PROVE this. (You can’t prove that the sun will come up tomorrow morning either.) You literally have to take it on faith. In fact most people don’t know that outside the science circle is a philosophy circle. Science is based on philosophical assumptions that you cannot scientifically prove. Actually, the scientific method cannot prove, it can only infer.

(Science originally came from the idea that God made an orderly universe which obeys fixed, discoverable laws - and because of those laws, He would not have to constantly tinker with it in order for it to operate.)

Now please consider what happens when we draw the biggest circle possibly can - around the whole universe. (If there are multiple universes, we’re drawing a circle around all of them too):

• There has to be something outside that circle. Something which we have to assume but cannot prove
• The universe as we know it is finite - finite matter, finite energy, finite space and 13.8 billion years time
• The universe (all matter, energy, space and time) cannot explain itself
• Whatever is outside the biggest circle is boundless. So by definition it is not possible to draw a circle around it.
• If we draw a circle around all matter, energy, space and time and apply Gödel’s theorem, then we know what is outside that circle is not matter, is not energy, is not space and is not time. Because all the matter and energy are inside the circle. It’s immaterial.
• Whatever is outside the biggest circle is not a system - i.e. is not an assemblage of parts. Otherwise we could draw a circle around them. The thing outside the biggest circle is indivisible.
• Whatever is outside the biggest circle is an uncaused cause, because you can always draw a circle around an effect.

We can apply the same inductive reasoning to the origin of information:

• In the history of the universe we also see the introduction of information, some 3.8 billion years ago. It came in the form of the Genetic code, which is symbolic and immaterial.
• The information had to come from the outside, since information is not known to be an inherent property of matter, energy, space or time.
• All codes we know the origin of are designed by conscious beings.
• Therefore whatever is outside the largest circle is a conscious being.

When we add information to the equation, we conclude that not only is the thing outside the biggest circle infinite and immaterial, it is also self-aware.

Isn’t it interesting how all these conclusions sound suspiciously similar to how theologians have described God for thousands of years?

Maybe that’s why it’s hardly surprising that 80-90% of the people in the world believe in some concept of God. Yes, it’s intuitive to most folks. But Gödel’s theorem indicates it’s also supremely logical. In fact it’s the only position one can take and stay in the realm of reason and logic.

The person who proudly proclaims, “You’re a man of faith, but I’m a man of science” doesn’t understand the roots of science or the nature of knowledge!

Interesting aside…

If you visit the world’s largest atheist website, Infidels, on the home page you will find the following statement:

“Naturalism is the hypothesis that the natural world is a closed system, which means that nothing that is not part of the natural world affects it.”

If you know Gödel’s theorem, you know all systems rely on something outside the system. So according to Gödel’s Incompleteness theorem, the folks at Infidels cannot be correct. Because the universe is a system, it has to have an outside cause.

Therefore Atheism violates the laws mathematics.

The Incompleteness of the universe isn’t proof that God exists. But… it IS proof that in order to construct a consistent model of the universe, belief in God is not just 100% logical… it’s necessary.

Euclid’s 5 postulates aren’t formally provable and God is not formally provable either. But… just as you cannot build a coherent system of geometry without Euclid’s 5 postulates, neither can you build a coherent description of the universe without a First Cause and a Source of order.

Thus faith and science are not enemies, but allies. They are two sides of the same coin. It had been true for hundreds of years, but in 1931 this skinny young Austrian mathematician named Kurt Gödel proved it.

No time in the history of mankind has faith in God been more reasonable, more logical, or more thoroughly supported by rational thought, science and mathematics.

Perry Marshall

“Math is the language God wrote the universe in.” -Galileo Galile, 1623

Further reading:

“Incompleteness: The Proof and Paradox of Kurt Gödel” by Rebecca Goldstein - fantastic biography and a great read

A collection of quotes and notes about Gödel’s proof from Miskatonic University Press

Formal description of Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem and links to his original papers on Wikipedia

Science vs. Faith on CoffeehouseTheology.com

The Genome Intelligence Principle

In astronomy we have the Anthropic Principle, which is both an observation and a hypothesis that the universe appears to be fine tuned to support life.

I postulate a Genome Intelligence Principle.  It is analogous to the Anthropic Principle, as it both observes and presupposes a higher level of order than mere laws of physics or chance would allow.

The Genome Intelligence Principle begins with the observation that the Genetic Code is not derivable from the laws of physics, but is arbitrary.  All codes we know the origin of are designed; codes by their very nature cannot be accounted for by pure physics and chemistry.  Codes only come from intelligence or prior codes.

The philosophical cornerstone of all successful science is the presumption of underlying order.  Such a presumption is never provable in advance; it is only rewarded after hypotheses have been made and experiments done.

Science must always assume that there is a reason for everything, and history shows us that this assumption is eventually rewarded.

***Thus the mission of science is always to uncover the next undiscovered layer of order.***

Anything less than that is beneath the dignity of science.

Large segments of biology are presently blinded by a materialistic paradigm. This view has no reason to presume underlying order and proactively presupposes disorder.  Thus we have an anti-scientific vandalism of biology through terms such as “Junk DNA.”

Science must raise its sights and expectations to make room for greater discoveries.  The only way to do this is to make highly favorable assumptions about the information content and programming of the genome.

In physics we assume underlying levels of order and discover an apparently endless world of subatomic particles.  In biology we will now similarly hypothesize that genome itself similarly contains virtually endless layers of order and function.

Genome Intelligence extends this observation to hypothesize that most if not all aspects of the genome and its information storage mechanisms are extremely optimal. It represents specific choices among trillions of trillions of available configurations. This design represents a nearly ideal set of parameter tradeoffs, maximizing the integrity of data storage over 3+ billion years of history.

This design ensures that evolution occurs as an engineered process and is achieved in a minimal number of steps. In other words the path from the origin of life 3.5 billion years ago to present humans has been traversed at near-optimum speed.

The four-letter alphabet A/C/G/T is a very particular choice.  It could just as easily be two or four or six or any other number of letters; but the tradeoffs have been analyzed in the literature and we see that a four letter alphabet maximizes data storage for a given amount of space.

The specific table of the 3-letter codon convention has already been shown to be optimal, compared to more than 18,000 other possible arrangements.

Genome Intelligence postulates that evolution itself, far from being inevitable, is only explainable as a programmed adaptation feature.  The genome is pre-programmed with Kaizen (the Japanese term for Continuous Improvement) and the tools to achieve it.

Implications of this are:

• Random mutation, the hero of evolution in the materialistic worldview, is actually the villain.  With only exceedingly rare exceptions, it has no positive role to play in evolution at all.
• Materialistic evolution is believed to be an aimless, purposeless process.  “Teleology” (purpose) is explicitly denied and even forbidden.  Genome Intelligence assumes the total opposite: That evolution is a directed process with predetermined goals, the means of achieving them already in place, and explicit, premeditated purpose.
• The biological world is information-driven and organized top-down, not bottom-up.  Teleology is not only warranted but is a consistently productive and essential assumption.
• The origin of life is explainable only as (1) a deliberate product of external intelligence, or (2) a consequence of a Strong Anthropic Principle such that life itself is the direct result of a profoundly fine-tuned universe.
• All attempts to explain life as a product of chance will continue to fail; and in fact chance itself is an anti-scientific explanation because it is a non-systematic process.  It fails because it fails to presume underlying order.

Both Strong and Weak Genome Intelligence Principle formulations are possible. A Strong Genome Intelligence Principle hypothesizes that humans and other specific life forms are a pre-meditated goal, and the diversity of our ecosystem exists to support human life.

A Weak Genome Intelligence Principle would be less ambitious in its assumptions, predicting that many other scenarios or creatures might have evolved given slightly different initial conditions.

I am open to a variety of outcomes - and the very real possibility that some of these ideas may lead down blind alleys. What’s important is to follow the evidence wherever it leads.

Perry Marshall

]]> http://www.cosmicfingerprints.com/blog/testable-hypothesis-id-4/feed/ http://www.cosmicfingerprints.com/blog/testable-hypothesis-id-3/ http://www.cosmicfingerprints.com/blog/testable-hypothesis-id-3/#comments Wed, 29 Jul 2009 04:41:49 +0000 Perry Marshall http://www.cosmicfingerprints.com/blog/?p=614 Earlier I proposed that evolution is driven by a “Mutation Algorithm.” I said the Mutation Algorithm is the highest software layer in DNA and it explores evolutionary pathways by testing new features (fur, skin patterns, claws, limbs, wings) like switching out blades on a Swiss Army Knife.

I explained why Junk DNA is one of the most backwards theories in the history of modern science.

I said that the “random mutation” theory of evolution is an anti-scientific proposal which fails to presume underlying order and teaches us nothing.

Today I continue with the implications of turning Darwinism on its head and assuming evolution operates top-down not bottom-up:

1.    Discoveries first made in DNA will trigger watershed advances in “Artificial Intelligence.” Because of this research, AI will finally move from futuristic dream to practical reality.

Most evangelists of Artificial Intelligence operate from a materialistic presupposition that intelligence automatically “emerges” from complexity.

Their line of reasoning is that if life somehow got started in the primordial soup and eventually gave birth to sentient humans, then surely computers will likewise become intelligent once they get fast enough or if the software gets good enough.

Occasionally there is even talk of the Internet itself someday becoming conscious.

All these beliefs presume that information is a bottom-up phenomenon, but I propose the exact opposite. Everything we know about digital communication states the opposite. The Darwinian theory is totally backwards.

The only reason evolution happens at all is that the genome is literally intelligent; that intelligence in some form is essential to the viability of life.

2.    Random Mutations, far from being the driving force behind evolution, are universally detrimental to the survival of the organism. In a complete reversal of the former Darwinian theory, DNA research will definitively demonstrate that random mutation is not capable of producing “evolution of species” at all, but only destroys information.

Theodosius Dobzhansky’s failed fruit fly radiation experiments will finally be accepted as an example of irreversibly corrupted information.  The reason of course is that random mutation has the same effect as noise in man-made communication systems: it causes irreversible damage.

Also, positive genetic changes previously attributed to random mutation will be understood to be the result of error correction mechanisms producing an acceptable or beneficial result, even as they resist accidental changes.

3.    Birth defects are the result of random mutations of a defect-free ancestor. Mutation rate models will point to a zero-defect ancestor with birth defects accumulating over time.

DNA that is presently seen to have no function can also be shown to be a byproduct of random mutations and destroyed information.  Random mutations cause cancer, tumors, aging, congenital abnormalities and death – not improved organisms or new species.

4.    We will discover that the Human Genome can be repaired but not improved. The best human genetic engineering can do is, for example, repair birth defects, which are the result of random mutations.  The only evolution of humans that is theoretically possible is already built into the genome (and thus may still be unfolding).

Humans cannot successfully “direct our own evolution” because we’re nowhere near as smart as the intelligence that created life in the first place and we do not have the ability to gather as much data as the Mutation Algorithm can gather.

Humans will not “take over” our own evolution in some triumphal Eugenics experiment of the future.

The very notion of engineering our own evolution is preposterous. It will continue to be preposterous until the genome is fully understood, an achievement that is at least several hundred years away.

5.    This new view of evolution as an engineered process (i.e. the genome uses concepts comparable to Six Sigma, Kaizen and Quality Control to adapt to its environment) will lead to specific discoveries and systems in DNA that can be directly applied to man-made systems.

This is in stark contrast to Darwinism, which is virtually useless for teaching anyone how to design anything.

(After you learned about Darwinian evolution, what did you suddenly know how to do or build as a result? Nothing!)

Our cave-man ancestors knew that the fittest survive.  There’s nothing profound about that; and Random mutation as an alleged path to improved designs is useless.

If Taguchi or other Continuous Improvement methods are the fastest way to improve a design, a random walk is actually the fastest way to destroy a design.

(Also notice that even in the best of circumstances, like Dawkins ‘methinks it is like a weasel’ program, Random Mutation still does not work without a pre-programmed selective goal.)

Genetic Algorithms that mindlessly grind through millions of permutations are notoriously inefficient, which is why their use in the software industry is so limited.

Thus the most potentially productive hypothesis for evolution is that it follows an algorithm that’s pre-engineered for maximum improvement within the smallest possible number of steps. A program that starts with single cells and ends up with human beings in only 3 billion years is an engineering achievement of the highest order.

Reverse-engineering the Mutation Algorithm will be one of the most powerful future applications of applied science.  To understand this 21st century view of evolution will be to know something that has immensely practical, real-world applications.

Eventually, unlocking the secrets of the Mutation Algorithm will be the “Holy Grail” of biology. It’s the secret to everything. The 20th century theory of random mutation will be seen as being just as foolish and detrimental to the practice of real science as the church’s opposition to Galileo.

6.    The adaptive capabilities of DNA (the Mutation Algorithm) are best understood as a function of intelligence. This adaptive algorithm that makes evolution possible does not blindly plod forward the way man-made programs do, but makes remarkably fit choices in environments that it has not faced before.

7.    DNA’s information storage is an optimal combination of physical data density, error-minimizing redundancy, and data compression.

Common sense observation: The entire human genome builds a 3-dimensional biological machine with a lifespan of 70-80 years and all the data necessary to do this can fit on a 750 Megabyte CD-ROM. A DNA molecule is thousands of times denser than a CD-ROM. Windows Vista can’t begin to fit on a CD-ROM, it has thousands of bugs and requires a never-ending series of software patches.

A man-made data storage program (i.e. CAD program) would require hundreds, perhaps thousands of times more storage space than DNA, to accurately represent the human body.

Hypothesis: DNA currently stores data at a higher density than any man-made digital information storage system, and as we approach or attempt to surpass the DNA benchmark we will encounter physical limitations that result in severe tradeoffs (i.e. greatly increased possibilities of long-term data loss).

The resources DNA devotes to error correction are extensive and absolutely necessary.  In DNA a single sequence of data is used in more ways and does more jobs than researchers presently imagine.

In DNA, nothing goes to waste.

Coming in Part 4: An Information Theory application of the Anthropic Principle.

Perry Marshall

This was broadcast on the British radio programme “Unbelievable.”

Mr. Hearty has a Computer Science background so his education is comparable with my own which is Electrical Engineering.

He takes the position that natural processes could produce living things. I take the position that information is only known to come from intelligence.

The debate is direct and no punches are pulled. At the same time it is polite and informative. There is none of the rancor that so often characterizes these discussions.

Perry Marshall debates atheist Peter Hearty - click icon to play/pause
or right-click this link to download the audio file.

*Discuss this topic on Justin Brierley’s blog

Enjoy….

Perry Marshall