h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Haven't popped my head in here for a VERY long time...and I haven't read all the backlog but I have a couple of questions...

1) how is DNA more like a binary then a book Xantic? Binary...correct me if I am wrong has the off/on requirement, while the four bases A C G and T do actually act like any alphabetical system where different combinations can create 'words' (that is to say you have 'codons' made of 3 nucleotides which become via the process of transcription/translation the amino acids which make up proteins yada yada)

2) Have you heard of the creationist faction called the raelians? I suggest you google for the Raelians. Amazing creationists of the UFO variety. To me it was quite a larf and shows how gulliable ...to me at least.... individual human beings can be.. Others may agree with them...
and the other thing they are doing is encouraging backing for cloning of Human beings.... I have problems with this..even though i am actually a practicing geneticst. But then so are most of the geneticsts i know....

Ho hum... anyone...?

I could understand how someone could look at the probabilties involved with evolution and come up with "nahhhh, that's just too improbable". What are the chances of a bacteria spontaneously coming together? The chances of DNA or protein building-blocks simply bumping together and working? Virtually none, I would agree.

...(Remember the atmosphere back when life first formed was not the oxygen-rich oxidating atmosphere that we have today. It was a reducing atmosphere; if life were to try to start in todays atmosphere it wouls probably fail)...

Therefore, it is a logical step to presume that there must have been a simpler precursor to these complex systems. Just in the same way that bacteria are simple cells that gave rise to more complex (eukaryotic) cells, and those cells gave rise to multi-cellular organisms. If we extrapolate evolution backwards, it is reasonable to presume this. It is not reasonable to start believing that a ludicrously improbably "God" created this all. Creationists moan about probabilities whilst simultaneously believing in the most unlikely story ever.

I would agree that DNA is less like binary, it is a language, ableit a very basic one.

I'll have a

Ste

Go back and read my puzzle analogy. That says something about chance.

As for DNA, it consists of 4 acids right? Those go together in a certain way so you have two building blocks AT and CG. I would say you could liken that to the 1 and 0 of a binary system. In a language you would need a lot of different units, because our brains would not be able to process it fast enough else. Just a language with 10.000 words would be awful to make with binaries. Look at for example the word bee. Think about how many words you know with three letters. That is because the 24 units gives a lot of combinations. While with the binary language, we only have 001,010,000,100,111,101. A language would then have to be made using words that would fill almost an entire sentence to have enough. Language also doesn't have the systematics of binary. The only language I have heard of with such systems was Solresol, an artificial one based on musical notes.

You can't really just clump together AT and CG and call them 1 and 0. Only one strand of DNA is read, i.e., not both bases at once, to illustrate:

5` AGCTACATAGACTAC 3`
|||||||||||||||
3` TCGATGTATCTGATG 5`

Only the, say, top strand would be read so it would mean that you actually have four 'letters' in the 'language'. If you read the top strand it would make a little protein made up of the amino acids in the following order: Threonine-Tyrosine-Isoleucine-Aspartate-Tyrosine. If you read the bottom strand it would end up as a very different protein.

Perhaps we should just settle on 'code' instead of language.



Ste

Dammit, that lined up lovely in courier...

Xanatic, I couldn't find your puzzle analogy, could you point me in the right direction please?

"Your eyes saw even the embryo of me, and in your book all it's parts were down in writing". As for circle/sphere, it's to do with how you translate the Hebrew.

Sorry to be so curt - am in hurry. Back later.

Doesn't the Bible also talk about the four corners of the Earth? I know it's a common phrase now, but it started in the Bible. Not very accurate in that case.

The reason most scientists won't accept creationism is that it isn't a scientific theory (not as it's usually presented, anyway). The notion of a designer God doesn't appear to give rise to any predictions that can be tested, unlike Darwinian evolution which has been tested many times since its proposal (read Dawkins, or Steve Jones' 'Almost Like a Whale'). Most 'evidence' for creationism turns out to be either wishful thinking or simply wrong. Too often, I've seen people fall back to 'Well, it's that way because God wanted it that way' or 'God put those fossils there to test our faith' or other such nonsense. (Not that I'm saying those are your arguments, but you've undoubtedly seen these arguments yourself).

I can't say I'm much impressed with any God who feels it necessary to build every living creature from scratch, especially one who has left such a huge number of failures.

My God is *much* smarter than that. One who was able to set the perfect initial conditions, create a beautiful (if still partly mysterious) set of rules for the physical world, and end up with us. Rather than a God who is constantly building and designing the next iteration of every creature on the planet (as he would have to be doing in the creationist worldview), I prefer a God who can sit back, watch his creation, and see that it was good. And when it wasn't good, well, all it requires is a little debugging with a system monitor. So the user interface metaphor is a little esoteric - burning bushes, tongues of fire, what have you - but it at least suggests that he's happy to let his *whole* creation run on its own steam, rather than pushing it every step of the way.

And yes, I know that *this* idea isn't any more testable. I just think it credits God with a little more talent. I think He deserves that.

To sum it all up, there are clear arguments by Creationists for Creationism and clear arguments by Evolutionists for Evolution. Faith in the divine changes everything. Personally, I prefer to take a Darwinistic Creationist view. God creates the Earth in seven "God" days. God creates everything and monitors it. Gets tired of dinosaurs and kills most of them off. Waits and sees some little apes with potential. Gives them the magic "God" touch. They become human. He steers them in the right direction for a couple of thousand years, gives them some books and rules, and then sits back to watch. There are only theories so pick one that you can live with and go for it. If it agrees with your culture, then be happy.

No longer confused,
-The Sciolist

Those are dangerous ideas your spreading Jim!

....although not as dangerous as the creationists......

See, if God were able to meddle every once-in-a-while into the evolution and generation of life, by manipulating DNA to move human development in one way or rather, then it may be God's will for people to do the same?

After all, we are mere instruments of God on Earth and whose to say *She* does not want GM foods and GM people???

If God put evolution in place then who are we to deny the force of natural selection? We don't leave less fit people to die in the streets just because they have disadvantageous mutations. So if He allows us to flagrantly ignore the backbone of his finest piece of work then surely we can modify what we want in animals and crops and people.

Oh hang on, we've already been doing that for centuries...



Ste

Ste, you'll need to walk me through your last post again....

Yeah I know, it was a bit of a mess.

Alright I'll do better this time. If God set evolution in place, he meant natural selection, mutation, gene flow etc to happen.

We, as humans, have opted out of natural selection. People who are less than fit (fit in the Neo-Darwinian sense = the relative ability to reproduce or survive to go on to reproduce) have just the same chances to breed than other, more fit people. Short-sighted people in the wild wouldn't last a few weeks. We are ignoring God's Will. "Playing God" as the tabloids love to shout every now and again.

Now if we can do that we can do what we want to the DNA of plants, animals. And we have been doing for millenia via selective breeding of plants as food crops and animals as domesticated livestock/pets.

Basically, if God ignores us cheating our way out of His Natural Forces, *She* shouldn't mind GM food and GM people.

Err, have I just made that more confusing? I think I have...

Ste

See me change God's sex at will throughout that last post? Such is my power...

Ok. Thanks. Now I think I can understand your argument....correct me if I'm wrong:

If we (by God's will) can change our environment, of which we are part, then we can change ourselves.

The one issue I have is with "environment"......ok, I have another issue with "wild". Given that we now *create*, if you will, our environment, the the "wild" could mean downtown Manhattan?

A short sighted person could survive for a while in downtown Manhattan. They may have a lower chance of survival if they choose to go uptown (Harlem) wearing a white robe and a white pointy hat though....

We have also changed ourselves more directly with medical technology and human compassion. The human gene pool would look very different if these two things didn't exist.

I was thinking "wild" more as if man didn't sculpt his environment around him all the time, instead lived more like other animals. Though I do understand downtown Manhatten can be pretty scary. Never mind Harlem.

Ste

Is this an American thing? It makes no sense whatsoever to me,

(a) No theory can be proved, as another observation is always possible which may disprove it. Science is a series of theories attempting to approach truth on grounds of rationality and evidence, none of which can achieve closure.

(b) The concept of an observation being proved is a pure confusion. How do I PROVE that I can see a flower? Or a planet?

(c) The concepts of flowers, planets, black holes etc. are concepts, and as such can be challenged - theoretically. There's no such thing as a theory-free observation.

(d) To base your view of reality on a series of assertions without proof (e.g. the bible) is ipso facto to base your view on an irrational dogmatism. This is simply perverse in the face of rationality, argument and evidence being so readily available. Irrationalism has its comforts of course, especially for the confused and the afflicted.

(e) On what grounds should you choose the bible rather than any other text? The Koran, anyone? The Tibetan Book of the Dead? Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone?


Some people would do well to read some books - on science (especially - as there's so much misunderstanding of it around here), and on the bible too- each as they are rather than as you fantasise them to be. Do some reading, for God's sake.

PS the fantasy of the garden in the jungle or forest (or whatever it was) is just that - a fantasy. The likelihood of finding such a garden is infinitesimal, so it's hardly a strong example - in fact it's ridiculously weak, being set up with a bias to one 'answer' being accepted rather than the other, which is made to seem ridiculous - but only on the daft assumption behind the 'problem'.

I was just rereading the part of the Bible that is supposed to mention DNA. The Bible I have looked in have quite a different translation in them. One is about "God saw my bones and the days are in his book". Quite different from the JW one. I have to say I liked how he proved they knew the Earth was round, by translating circle into sphere. I could prove quite a lot with that method.

I don't really think it's an American thing. Perhaps certain viewpoints may seem to be more common from this side of the pond. On the other hand, maybe certain holders of certain viewpoints on this side of the pond are merely more vocal about them than those that do not. There are quite a few Americans around H2G2 (and even more not involved with it) that feel precisely as you do, myself very much included. Most of us seem to have said our piece in the past and have little wish to repeat ourselves, that's all. I liked the way you put it, though; makes me feel good to see it put so well, regarding proof. As an old collegue of mine used to like to quip, "I have absolute faith in science!" I used to like saying "the only thing truly impossible is impossibility itself" - but it sounded too much like something a favorite author of mine has said, as well as it wound up that I had to explain myself more often than it was worth.

"Science offers proof without any certainty. Creationists offer certainty without any proof."
Ashley Montagu

Ste