• Welcome to Religious Forums, a friendly forum to discuss all religions in a friendly surrounding.

    Your voice is missing! You will need to register to get access to the following site features:
    • Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
    • Our modern chat room. No add-ons or extensions required, just login and start chatting!
    • Access to private conversations with other members.

    We hope to see you as a part of our community soon!

Are Codes created by random processes or intelligence?

Man of Faith

Well-Known Member
For example a code of law, code of conduct, Morris code, computer code, or the genetic code? Do random processes create codes or are they designed by intelligence? If we go out into space and do not find any life, will there be any codes? Can we say that the genetic code was created by a random process when all other codes are created by intelligence? I guess you can say that but is that reasonable? :confused:
 

Daemon Sophic

Avatar in flux
For example a code of law, code of conduct, Morris code, computer code, or the genetic code? Do random processes create codes or are they designed by intelligence? If we go out into space and do not find any life, will there be any codes? Can we say that the genetic code was created by a random process when all other codes are created by intelligence? I guess you can say that but is that reasonable? :confused:
Universally, entropy is always gaining. However, that does not imply that local phenomena of order cannot come into being out of the seeming chaos, for finite periods of time.
Then, once codes are created, others may come to be generated as a by-product of the first randomly occuring code. i.e. - random chemicals under varying atmospheric pressures subjected to solar radiation, varying temperatures, lightening, etc.... --> phospholipid sphereules and simple archebacter style RNA with self-replication ---> RNA simple bacteria --> DNA bacteria --> multicellular organisms --> (billions of years passage) --> geeks in a garage formulating computer languages, etc...etc...
Of course, one stray asteroid and entropy trumps code production yet again. :cover:

P.S. - or are you suggesting that ID was a keen idea? :confused::facepalm:
 

Baydwin

Well-Known Member
There's nothing random about the genetic code. Prior to their inclusion within cells the nucleic acids may have been randomly combined, but once they started coding for specific proteins and became a genetic code as we know it today, it became a rigidly controlled system.
 
A

angellous_evangellous

Guest
This is what happens when you listen to the Dixie Chicks.

Don't do it. Please.
 

Man of Faith

Well-Known Member
Universally, entropy is always gaining. However, that does not imply that local phenomena of order cannot come into being out of the seeming chaos, for finite periods of time.
Then, once codes are created, others may come to be generated as a by-product of the first randomly occuring code. i.e. - random chemicals under varying atmospheric pressures subjected to solar radiation, varying temperatures, lightening, etc.... --> phospholipid sphereules and simple archebacter style RNA with self-replication ---> RNA simple bacteria --> DNA bacteria --> multicellular organisms --> (billions of years passage) --> geeks in a garage formulating computer languages, etc...etc...
Of course, one stray asteroid and entropy trumps code production yet again. :cover:

P.S. - or are you suggesting that ID was a keen idea? :confused::facepalm:

You will have to quit using those big words if you want me to understand you.
 

Gunfingers

Happiness Incarnate
For example a code of law, code of conduct, Morris code, computer code, or the genetic code? Do random processes create codes or are they designed by intelligence? If we go out into space and do not find any life, will there be any codes? Can we say that the genetic code was created by a random process when all other codes are created by intelligence? I guess you can say that but is that reasonable? :confused:
First off, despite all using the word "code" those are all very different things. The word i think you're looking for is "patterns". For example the pattern that the letters "w-a-t-e-r" put together mean dihydrogen-oxide, usually in liquid form, or how long-short-long-short represents the letter "C".

If you ever take a calculus class you'll learn that the universe is extremely ordered and patterned. The reality is that yes, these patterns do exist naturally, and all that remains is for there to be some significance to them.

Now on to your actual point, which seems to be that the patterns in genetic material that are used as a "blueprint" for living organisms couldn't exist naturally. Well, it could. Our genetic material is made up of four amino acids, Adenine, Guanine, Thymine, and Cytosine. Adenine and Thymine always bind together, as do Guanine and Cytosine. These bonds occur naturally, and were simulated in the Miller-Urey experiment. Through processes that i won't even attempt to explain, because i don't at all understand them, cells develop based on what order those amino acid pairs are in. The process is, in fact, completely explainable as a natural phenomena.
 

Man of Faith

Well-Known Member
There's nothing random about the genetic code. Prior to their inclusion within cells the nucleic acids may have been randomly combined, but once they started coding for specific proteins and became a genetic code as we know it today, it became a rigidly controlled system.

Please make up your mind, is the genetic code created by a random process or not?
 

Man of Faith

Well-Known Member
First off, despite all using the word "code" those are all very different things. The word i think you're looking for is "patterns". For example the pattern that the letters "w-a-t-e-r" put together mean dihydrogen-oxide, usually in liquid form, or how long-short-long-short represents the letter "C".

If you ever take a calculus class you'll learn that the universe is extremely ordered and patterned. The reality is that yes, these patterns do exist naturally, and all that remains is for there to be some significance to them.

Now on to your actual point, which seems to be that the patterns in genetic material that are used as a "blueprint" for living organisms couldn't exist naturally. Well, it could. Our genetic material is made up of four amino acids, Adenine, Guanine, Thymine, and Cytosine. Adenine and Thymine always bind together, as do Guanine and Cytosine. These bonds occur naturally, and were simulated in the Miller-Urey experiment. Through processes that i won't even attempt to explain, because i don't at all understand them, cells develop based on what order those amino acid pairs are in. The process is, in fact, completely explainable as a natural phenomena.

So a random process created the most complicated code in existence and a random process created it to be able to repair itself? I cannot buy that.
 

Baydwin

Well-Known Member
These bonds occur naturally, and were simulated in the Miller-Urey experiment. Through processes that i won't even attempt to explain, because i don't at all understand them, cells develop based on what order those amino acid pairs are in. The process is, in fact, completely explainable as a natural phenomena.
DNA is the blueprint, from this mRNA is transcibed as a mirror opposite.
The strip of mRNA may have one gene, or many. It leaves the nucleus and finds its way to a ribosome where it attaches. Once attached tRNA, which are tiny fragments of RNA 3 bases long, come along with a bonded amino acid.
The tRNA lines up with the corresponding codon (group of 3 bases) and "sticks". Eventually you'll have a whole strong of amino acids lined up next to one another and held in place by their tRNA partners to the mRNA strip. The amino acids can then react with one another and, because of the order specified in the mRNA, will fold up to produce a functional protein.

What's important to remember though is that none of this is controlled, tRNAs don't know where to go or what to do, they're just floating around in the cytoplasm and eventually, due to sheer luck, happen to bump into the mRNA. Same with the mRNA and the ribosome it needs to be translated into a protein, it could be floating around for ages before it actually makes contact.
 

Baydwin

Well-Known Member
So a random process created the most complicated code in existence and a random process created it to be able to repair itself? I cannot buy that.
You can't buy that, but you can buy a highly sophisticated intelligence spontaneously erupting from the ether which then sets about designing things that look and act completely random. Interesting...
 

Man of Faith

Well-Known Member
In what sense do you mean "random process"? Just because something is undirected doesn't mean it's random.

Well what I have in mind for random is something like a snowflake or a hurricane. Each snowflake is different but they are produced randomly or undirected by an intelligence. Same as a hurricane, when the atmospheric properties are right, brought about by randomness a hurricane is the result.
 

Baydwin

Well-Known Member
Please make up your mind, is the genetic code created by a random process or not?
It's not a yes or no answer. Yes, to begin with nucleotides will have grouped together randomly. But once it had stabilised into a code that gave rise to useful proteins, it could not function if it had no form of control, so no it wasn't randomly created. However, yes it does get modified by randomly occuring mutations. But no, the entire genetic code isn't cabable of being changed at random because there are proteins which check the code, and there are certain portions of code that prove fatal if they mutate (perhaps why there are so many spontaneous abortions?).

And then the obvious point that the genetic code wasn't created, it evolved.
 

Man of Faith

Well-Known Member
You can't buy that, but you can buy a highly sophisticated intelligence spontaneously erupting from the ether which then sets about designing things that look and act completely random. Interesting...

That was already addressed in a previous post and the answer was that God is eternal or else we wouldn't be here.
 

Baydwin

Well-Known Member
That was already addressed in a previous post and the answer was that God is eternal or else we wouldn't be here.
Where is your evidence to back that statement up?
God could easily have had a beginning and still create the universe. The first time you meet God he's already floating above the waters that will become the Earth, you know nothing of what he was doing prior to that, or even if he was only created at that point by something higher.
 

Daemon Sophic

Avatar in flux
That was already addressed in a previous post and the answer was that God is eternal or else we wouldn't be here.
OK people. I'm calling the thread.
There's no more need for heroic efforts of intelligence, reason, logic, or evidence.

Time of death, 16:31 hours U.S. East Coast time. That's a wrap.


:facepalm:
 
Top