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From: miller@uiucdcsb.Uiuc.ARPA
Newsgroups: net.origins
Subject: Information Generation, Part 1
Message-ID: <32500042@uiucdcsb>
Date: Thu, 25-Jul-85 13:08:00 EDT
Article-I.D.: uiucdcsb.32500042
Posted: Thu Jul 25 13:08:00 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 28-Jul-85 14:44:20 EDT
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Nf-ID: #N:uiucdcsb:32500042:000:3945
Nf-From: uiucdcsb.Uiuc.ARPA!miller    Jul 25 12:08:00 1985


Speaking of DNA, Byron C. Howes writes:

> While you may believe that its structure indicates design,
> you have to admit that even the most reasonable of human engineers could do
> a better job of designing.

Byron has gotten himself out on a limb here, which I will now saw off behind
him.  Fine, Byron, why don't you go out and design working DNA from scratch,
and thereby create life in the lab.  The life forms we see now aren't perfect,
of course, due in part to mutational degradation since the original creation,
but unless you can even match that, I suggest you be more reserved in making
such grandiose statements.  Don't post notes to net.origins that you know
aren't true; go out and make yourself a shoe-in for the Nobel Prize.  Create
life, if you think you can "do a better job".  Until then, I "have to admit"
nothing.

> Hey!  You guys are the ones maintaining that patterns indicate an active
> designer.  Despite your assertions, neither the SETI scientists nor any
> evolutionary scientist here has said that.

Wrong again.  The SETI (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) scientists
have nothing to look for *but* patterns.  They gather a bunch of electromag-
netic frequencies.  What do you think they look for?  Well?  Randomness?  A
particular frequency?  A specific amplitude? Of course not and everyone knows
it.  The only characteristic of significance is a code or pattern with a
(hopefully discernible) information content.  That is obvious.  Now if time and
random natural laws could produce information, the SETI project would be in
trouble since they would have no way to determine which informational codes
were in fact illusionary and which were actually designed by an intelligence.
If you disagree, them perhaps you'll provide us (and SETI) with the criteria
for differentiation.  Now, however, creationists have the right to ask:  well,
gee, how did the information in DNA arise?  After all, it is the most complex
code currently know.  As we all know, at the time of reproduction, a single
cell holds enough information in its DNA to program the development of an
entire adult organism.

> (Oh, I forgot, this is the same A. Ray Miller who in his
> first posting to the net said he was undecided about creation vs. evolution.
> It was only later that we found out he was an ICR type in student's clothing.)

Byron here demonstrates either his bad memory or dishonesty; I'll assume the
former.  My first posting in this long series was at 1:02am January 28, 1984 on
net.misc.  It was a reply to John Hobson who had created a straw man of crea-
tionists' positions.  The debate raged for a while until net.origins was begun
to get us all off net.misc.  My first posting on the new net.origins was at
8:07pm April 10, 1984.  It was part 1 of 2 on a review of the Arkansas'
Balanced Treatment Act trial.  I have saved every note I posted.  It amounts to
3827 lines (245111 characters).  No where in any of that did I say I was
"undecided about creation vs. evolution" or anything of the sort.  Byron should
either post the exact quote he thinks stated or implied that, or else issue an
apology.

> Natural processes won't answer back when we try to
> broadcast back to them, will they.  If we send a craft to visit the source,
> there won't be anyone home if it is a natural process.  The point is that the
> SETI team at no point said that a patterned transmission was *proof* of
> intelligence.  That statement that they did would seem to be the product of
> the creationist somewhat lower standard of proof.

Well, that's a convenient reply, since due to the great distances we cannot
test it in our life spans (and therefore falsify the hypothesis).  Also, how
can informational patterns be proof (excuse me, evidence for) extra-terrestrial
intelligence, while at the same time informational patterns are evidence for
(excuse me, proof) nonintelligence-directed evolution?

A. Ray Miller
Univ Illinois