This "Intelligent Design" question can be approached at a much more fundamental level, which removes the questions of the speed of evolution of living organisms, which becomes trivial when the nature of one of the 4 building blocks, Cytosine, is grokked.
This immediately came to mind as I started to read this particular piece, so I will briefly excerpt here, the most deeply revealing insight into the essence of reproducing organisms which I have ever come across:
The Peculiar Schema of DNA Codon’s Second Letter
Posted on February 24, 2021 by The Ethical Skeptic
The second letter of the three digit DNA codon bears remarkable schema of such extraordinary improbability, that the question arises, “How did this 1 in 3.4 octillion occurrence happen at all?” Is its essence a signature livestock crypto-branding, wherein the iron just happens to be struck at the single best intersection of complexity and immutability inside the planet’s common genome?
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The reader should note that, while most understand this is neither a case for intelligent design nor an appeal to irreducible complexity, the argument presented below is also not an appeal to ‘fine tuning.’ In professional systems parlance, ‘tuning’ refers to the manipulation of a preexisting operating or functional system or cycle to achieve a specific outcome or condition—none of which is relevant here.
The foreordination described below is ex nihilo, arising from nothing and lacking any feedback mechanism to guide its direction. Unlike evolution, this standard code was not refined through a gradual cycling in Shannon entropy within a preexisting order. It represents an impossible—rather than merely improbable—chemistry, one that originated spontaneously in a single stroke, without derivation through co-option, natural selection, or culled redundancy. It does not involve the adjustment or refinement of an existing schema or feedback cycle, as is characteristic of evolutionary processes.
This is the proverbial egg in the classic chicken-or-egg paradox.
For this reason and many others, the Standard Code DNA Codex is sometimes referred to by a Francis Crick assigned moniker, the ‘Frozen Accident’.
Very cool, John. Thanks so much for sharing this with us. I'll take it to my gnostic class I'm teaching now at Southern Oregon University in hopes of swaying the naysayers. 😊
Now that I've read, or attempted to read, the entire article constructed out of the big, fancy-pants words he employs to demonstrate his rarified status, 😶, I find myself agreeing with the science of the Frozen Accident, but disagreeing with much else of what what the Ethical Skeptic has determined to be "true.
He is somewhat more rigorous than I am able, myself, to be, though I have studied all of the means he employs in college and med school.
He's legit.
He's a lot more intelligent than I am. I am guessing IQ at least in 150s, but my intuition is 160s.
"Frozen Accident" is a remarkably neat package, but it declares a lack of intention, and Roger (TES) makes a good case for "accident" being far, far more improbably than what is commonly declared "impossible", by many orders of magnitude, and in a simplified analysis which is very lenient...
It makes a point that this format is a declaration of design-intention, a "branding", as he puts it.
Thank you, Cyd.
This "Intelligent Design" question can be approached at a much more fundamental level, which removes the questions of the speed of evolution of living organisms, which becomes trivial when the nature of one of the 4 building blocks, Cytosine, is grokked.
This immediately came to mind as I started to read this particular piece, so I will briefly excerpt here, the most deeply revealing insight into the essence of reproducing organisms which I have ever come across:
The Peculiar Schema of DNA Codon’s Second Letter
Posted on February 24, 2021 by The Ethical Skeptic
https://theethicalskeptic.com/2021/02/24/the-peculiar-schema-of-dna-codons-second-letter/
The second letter of the three digit DNA codon bears remarkable schema of such extraordinary improbability, that the question arises, “How did this 1 in 3.4 octillion occurrence happen at all?” Is its essence a signature livestock crypto-branding, wherein the iron just happens to be struck at the single best intersection of complexity and immutability inside the planet’s common genome?
---
The reader should note that, while most understand this is neither a case for intelligent design nor an appeal to irreducible complexity, the argument presented below is also not an appeal to ‘fine tuning.’ In professional systems parlance, ‘tuning’ refers to the manipulation of a preexisting operating or functional system or cycle to achieve a specific outcome or condition—none of which is relevant here.
The foreordination described below is ex nihilo, arising from nothing and lacking any feedback mechanism to guide its direction. Unlike evolution, this standard code was not refined through a gradual cycling in Shannon entropy within a preexisting order. It represents an impossible—rather than merely improbable—chemistry, one that originated spontaneously in a single stroke, without derivation through co-option, natural selection, or culled redundancy. It does not involve the adjustment or refinement of an existing schema or feedback cycle, as is characteristic of evolutionary processes.
This is the proverbial egg in the classic chicken-or-egg paradox.
For this reason and many others, the Standard Code DNA Codex is sometimes referred to by a Francis Crick assigned moniker, the ‘Frozen Accident’.
Very cool, John. Thanks so much for sharing this with us. I'll take it to my gnostic class I'm teaching now at Southern Oregon University in hopes of swaying the naysayers. 😊
Now that I've read, or attempted to read, the entire article constructed out of the big, fancy-pants words he employs to demonstrate his rarified status, 😶, I find myself agreeing with the science of the Frozen Accident, but disagreeing with much else of what what the Ethical Skeptic has determined to be "true.
He is somewhat more rigorous than I am able, myself, to be, though I have studied all of the means he employs in college and med school.
He's legit.
He's a lot more intelligent than I am. I am guessing IQ at least in 150s, but my intuition is 160s.
"Frozen Accident" is a remarkably neat package, but it declares a lack of intention, and Roger (TES) makes a good case for "accident" being far, far more improbably than what is commonly declared "impossible", by many orders of magnitude, and in a simplified analysis which is very lenient...
It makes a point that this format is a declaration of design-intention, a "branding", as he puts it.