Thursday, September 3, 2009

The Origin of the DNA Code: Did Evolution Occur Between Neighbors?

The DNA code is both nearly universal and nearly optimal. With the exception of minor deviations occasionally discovered, the same DNA code is found in all species. And that code is so efficient it is sometimes labeled as “optimal.” This is yet another simple example revealing the absurdity of evolutionary theory. Let’s see why.

The near universality of the code means it was present in evolution’s purported universal common ancestor. It would be too unlikely (even for evolutionists) for the identical unique code to have evolved independently in the different evolutionary branches, so it must have been present from the very beginning. In other words, evolutionists must explain the universality of the code as arising from a common ancestor, not from the repeated evolution of the code.

If that is true, then evolutionists must say that evolution somehow created such an efficient code very early in the history of life. But evolutionists typically refer to these early stages of life as elementary, inefficient, crude and so forth. For instance, in their abiogenesis narrative evolutionists often appeal to “crude” chemical processes to account for the variation in replication they need. But if life was elementary and crude, how did such an optimal code arise—a code that is remarkably suited for the more advanced cells that had not even yet arisen?

Furthermore, the fact that the DNA code is so efficient means that evolution performed a tremendous search operation. Only by creating an abundance of such codes could such a good one be found. Remember, evolution is a blind process.

But while evolution must be very adept at creating new codes, it must paradoxically also be unable to create new codes. The code must be frozen, otherwise it would not be universally shared amongst the species. So evolutionists must say that at one time evolution was adept at evolving the code, but later it became inept at evolving the code.

When did such a dramatic transition occur, and why? If the code is so difficult to evolve these days, why was it so easy to evolve back then? Again, evolutionists often appeal to the mythical chaos of early life to explain why the code was once so malleable. This brings us back to the tension between chaotic life forms and near optimal codes.

One leading team of evolutionists recently concluded that:

an explanation of code universality based on vertical evolution is likely to be problematic.

Their idea is that a different sort of evolution occurred in the early days of life. Rather than the familiar Darwinian idea of evolution occurring across many generations, their idea is that evolution occurred much faster, between neighboring organisms as they traded genetic information. They summarize the idea this way:

The central concept is that a variety of collective, but non-Darwinian, mechanisms likely to be present in early communal life generically lead to refinement and selection of innovation-sharing protocols, such as the genetic code.

Likely to be present? Generically lead to refinement and selection of innovation-sharing protocols? These fact-free assertions are what evolution is all about. In evolutionary thought, science has become a mechanism for story-telling.

11 comments:

  1. Excellent post!
    There is a typo just before the last quote where it should say "occurred MUCH faster" instead of "must".

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  2. Samuel Skinner

    "The DNA code is both nearly universal and nearly optimal."

    How is it nearly optimal? In humans it is rather poorly applied- the telonomes at the ends gradually fall apart and kill the cell and eventually the individual. Parts are considered junk DNA which may just be unknown... or could be inserted viruses and broken code. And then there is the fact that much of it is offlimits because it is wrapped around proteins.

    Lets not get into how it is translated by ribosomes. 64 different combinations and only 22 different outcomes? Alot of redundancy which is helpful for dealing with mutations... except that there are much better ways of doing that without sacrificing potential amino acids.

    "If that is true, then evolutionists must say that evolution somehow created such an efficient code very early in the history of life. But evolutionists typically refer to these early stages of life as elementary, inefficient, crude and so forth. For instance, in their abiogenesis narrative evolutionists often appeal to “crude” chemical processes to account for the variation in replication they need. But if life was elementary and crude, how did such an optimal code arise"

    Just because a process is considered crude (by biologists no less) does not mean it cannot make sophisticated results.

    "a code that is remarkably suited for the more advanced cells that had not even yet arisen?""

    And how do we know it was remarkably suited to these cells rather than the other way around? That the cells work well with it because they adapted to use it as well as they could?

    "But while evolution must be very adept at creating new codes, it must paradoxically also be unable to create new codes. "

    Because living things are made out of this code which means that it is edible to them...

    So yeah, conditions have changed.

    "Again, evolutionists often appeal to the mythical chaos of early life to explain why the code was once so malleable."

    How is this mythical? We know that the Earth was in a molten state prior to the formation of life. After it cooled we had a planet with no organic feedback mechanisms, no ozone and a host of other traits that made it quite alien.

    "their idea is that evolution occurred much faster, between neighboring organisms as they traded genetic information. "

    Except... that is exactly what modern bacteria do.

    "These fact-free assertions are what evolution is all about."

    Theories, by defintion, make predictions and predictions are not made up of facts. They are informed by them, but if they were only composed of facts they wouldn't be predicting anything.

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  3. Samuel:

    ---
    "The DNA code is both nearly universal and nearly optimal."

    How is it nearly optimal?
    ---

    For starters you can look here:

    http://www.darwinspredictions.com/#_2.2_The_DNA

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  4. Samuel Skinner

    I'm assuming you are refering to the falsification section.

    "As had been noticed, the code’s arrangement reduces the effects of mutations and reading errors. "

    This is NOT an optimal. I believe this explains it best:
    http://xkcd.com/463/

    Don't forget- there are living things which have tremendously good resistance to radiation and other mutational hazards through methodically fixing their DNA structure- and they share this which is suboptimal. In fact for all bacteria the prevention of mutations by such a system and the limiting of potential codons is suboptimal.

    In fact, even for humans this could be considered bad. After all, cancer gets through a passive system.

    "For instance, the code’s degeneracy means that it is capable of carrying other messages, in addition to the protein amino acid sequence encoding. That is, such a code can, in theory, allow the DNA sequence to carry multiple, parallel, messages, and this is precisely what researchers have found. For instance, the DNA sequence tells proteins where to bind to the DNA structure and where to splice its duplicate copy that is created when creating new proteins. The DNA sequence also determines the structure of that duplicate copy. In addition to allowing for multiple messages, the DNA code also reduces the effects of harmful errors by increasing the chances that such errors will result in a stop codon."

    Really, I'm not getting the point of this part. DNA can have markers and this is special because...? Proteins also have markers on them- that is the whole point of amino acids. This isn't something unique.

    The entire problem with this is it takes a system that is complicated, looks at its good features and then declares that it is designed. And you would know that how? Have you compared it to all possible alternatives? What about different amino acid possibilities? What about RNA? What about the fact that this is the same for all life on Earth which is BAD. If it was different, viruses couldn't jump between different systems. If it was different lifeforms would not all need the same minerals.

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  5. Samuel:

    "The entire problem with this is it takes a system that is complicated, looks at its good features and then declares that it is designed."

    Where does it make such a declaration?

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  6. Are you telling me that

    http://www.darwinspredictions.com/#_2.2_The_DNA

    is not advocating desing? It goes on about how unlikely DNAs evolution is, how it has such great abilities and how evolution is not a good explanation. Unless you are a Lamarkian it isn't a leap to conclude you mean design as an alternative to evolution.

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  7. Yes I am telling you that.

    http://www.darwinspredictions.com

    does not advocate design. It is about evolution. My aim as a scientist is to education people about science, and represent the evidence accurately (unlike evolutionists). I'm not too interested in making truth claims beyond the evidence.

    But if evolution is not a good scientific theory, then what is? Sure, that's an interesting discussion, but it opens up questions about the philosophy of science, and in general is a more complex discussion I think. See this, for example:

    http://darwins-god.blogspot.com/2009/06/question-for-barbara-forrest.html

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  8. Your attacks on evolution are based on the idea the structures are too complicated to have evolved. That sounds pretty much like design to me.

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  9. "Your attacks on evolution are based on the idea the structures are too complicated to have evolved."

    No, my attacks are based on predictions of evolution.

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  10. Even Darwin expected the fossil record to prove him right before his death. Unfortunately we still see nothing but 'sudden appearance' and disappearance of species, and not a single transitional form.

    Unfortunate as well is the fact that the DNA itself is not the code, the code is written on the structure in a specific mathematical language, or the DNA molecule is the 'carrier' for the code. Just like a book, it is the means of conveyance for the data, not the data itself.

    I'm not attacking evolution, it is just a small leap of faith to have faith. It is a huge leap of faith to believe that I can follow the instructions to make an omelet, and one day I will get a cheeseburger. DNA is a specific artificial language, with a storage and retrieval system, error and proof reading devices, assembly processes capable of replicating itself as well as instructing cellular manufacturing...

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