So they wave the magic wand of "it self-assembled"...and redundant complexity does not touch on the argument-yes, you could have in SOME IR machines reduce the amount of a certain part...but then there's the problem of minimal functionality to include. And gene duplication doesn't solve the problem-you get the same gene twice...We have shown, first, that systems satisfying Behe's characterization of irreducible biochemical complexity can arise naturally and spontaneously as the result of self-organizing chemical processes. Second, we have argued further that evolved biochemical and molecular systems exhibit redundant complexity -- this kind of complexity simultaneously accounts for the stability of evolved biochemical systems and processes in the face of even quite radical perturbations, for biochemical and metabolic plasticity, and, mainly as a result of gene duplication, for extant structures and processes to get co-opted in the course of evolutionary time, to serve novel functional ends.
As usual, your article suffers from hand waving and lack of scientific evidence, no playing with evidence, no looking at probability...
http://www.proteinscience.org/cgi/conte ... 04802904v1
I knew what was wrong...Meyer puts it into words...
http://www.arn.org/docs/meyer/sm_dnaotherdesigns.htm
The empirical difficulties that attend self-organizational scenarios can be illustrated by examining a DNA molecule. The diagram opposite shows that the structure of DNA depends upon several chemical bonds. There are bonds, for example, between the sugar and the phosphate molecules that form the two twisting backbones of the DNA molecule. There are bonds fixing individual (nucleotide) bases to the sugar-phosphate backbones on each side of the molecule. Notice that there are no chemical bonds between the bases that run along the spine of the helix. Yet it is precisely along this axis of the molecule that the genetic instructions in DNA are encoded.
Further, just as magnetic letters can be combined and recombined in any way to form various sequences on a metal surface, so too can each of the four bases A, T, G, and C attach to any site on the DNA backbone with equal facility, making all sequences equally probable (or improbable). The same type of chemical bond occurs between the bases and the backbone regardless of which base attaches. All four bases are acceptable; none is preferred. In other words, differential bonding affinities do not account for the sequencing of the bases. Because these same facts hold for RNA molecules, researchers who speculate that life began in an "RNA world" have also failed to solve the sequencing problem--i.e., the problem of explaining how information present in all functioning RNA molecules could have arisen in the first place.
For those who want to explain the origin of life as the result of self-organizing properties intrinsic to the material constituents of living systems, these rather elementary facts of molecular biology have devastating implications. The most logical place to look for self-organizing properties to explain the origin of genetic information is in the constituent parts of the molecules carrying that information. But biochemistry and molecular biology make clear that the forces of attraction between the constituents in DNA, RNA, and protein do not explain the sequence specificity of these large information-bearing biomolecules.
Significantly, information theorists insist that there is a good reason for this. If chemical affinities between the constituents in the DNA message text determined the arrangement of the text, such affinities would dramatically diminish the capacity of DNA to carry information. Consider what would happen if the individual nucleotide "letters" in a DNA molecule did interact by chemical necessity with each other. Every time adenine (A) occurred in a growing genetic sequence, it would likely drag thymine (T) along with it. Every time cytosine (C) appeared, guanine (G) would follow. As a result, the DNA message text would be peppered with repeating sequences of A's followed by T's and C's followed by G's.
Rather than having a genetic molecule capable of unlimited novelty, with all the unpredictable and aperiodic sequences that characterize informative texts, we would have a highly repetitive text awash in redundant sequences--much as happens in crystals. Indeed, in a crystal the forces of mutual chemical attraction do completely explain the sequential ordering of the constituent parts, and consequently crystals cannot convey novel information. Sequencing in crystals is repetitive and highly ordered, but not informative. Once one has seen "Na" followed by "Cl" in a crystal of salt, for example, one has seen the extent of the sequencing possible. Bonding affinities, to the extent they exist, mitigate against the maximization of information. They cannot, therefore, be used to explain the origin of information. Affinities create mantras, not messages.
The tendency to confuse the qualitative distinction between "order" and "information" has characterized self-organizational research efforts and calls into question the relevance of such work to the origin of life. Self-organizational theorists explain well what doesn't need explaining. What needs explaining is not the origin of order (whether in the form of crystals, swirling tornadoes, or the "eyes" of hurricanes), but the origin of information--the highly improbable, aperiodic, and yet specified sequences that make biological function possible.
To see the distinction between order and information, compare the sequence "ABABABABAB ABAB" to the sequence "Time and tide wait for no man." The first sequence is repetitive and ordered, but not complex or informative. Systems that are characterized by both specificity and complexity (what information theorists call "specified complexity") have "information content." Since such systems have the qualitative feature of aperiodicity or complexity, they are qualitatively distinguishable from systems characterized by simple periodic order. Thus, attempts to explain the origin of order have no relevance to discussions of the origin of information content. Significantly, the nucleotide sequences in the coding regions of DNA have, by all accounts, a high information content--that is, they are both highly specified and complex, just like meaningful English sentences or functional lines of code in computer software.
Yet the information contained in an English sentence or computer software does not derive from the chemistry of the ink or the physics of magnetism, but from a source extrinsic to physics and chemistry altogether. Indeed, in both cases, the message transcends the properties of the medium. The information in DNA also transcends the properties of its material medium. Because chemical bonds do not determine the arrangement of nucleotide bases, the nucleotides can assume a vast array of possible sequences and thereby express many different biochemical messages.
If the properties of matter (i.e., the medium) do not suffice to explain the origin of information, what does? Our experience with information-intensive systems (especially codes and languages) indicates that such systems always come from an intelligent source--i.e., from mental or personal agents, not chance or material necessity. This generalization about the cause of information has, ironically, received confirmation from origin-of-life research itself. During the last forty years, every naturalistic model proposed has failed to explain the origin of information--the great stumbling block for materialistic scenarios. Thus, mind or intelligence or what philosophers call "agent causation" now stands as the only cause known to be capable of creating an information-rich system, including the coding regions of DNA, functional proteins, and the cell as a whole.
Because mind or intelligent design is a necessary cause of an informative system, one can detect the past action of an intelligent cause from the presence of an information-intensive effect, even if the cause itself cannot be directly observed. Since information requires an intelligent source, the flowers spelling "Welcome to Victoria" in the gardens of Victoria harbor in Canada lead visitors to infer the activity of intelligent agents even if they did not see the flowers planted and arranged.
Scientists in many fields now recognize the connection between intelligence and information and make inferences accordingly. Archaeologists assume a mind produced the inscriptions on the Rosetta Stone. SETI's search for extraterrestrial intelligence presupposes that the presence of information imbedded in electromagnetic signals from space would indicate an intelligent source. As yet, radio astronomers have not found information-bearing signals coming from space. But molecular biologists, looking closer to home, have discovered information in the cell. Consequently, DNA justifies making what probability theorist William A. Dembski calls "the design inference."
Of course, many scientists have argued that to infer design gives up on science. They say that inferring design constitutes an argument from scientific ignorance--a "God of the Gaps" fallacy. Since science doesn't yet know how biological information could have arisen, design theorists invoke a mysterious notion--intelligent design--to fill a gap in scientific knowledge. Many philosophers, for their part, resist reconsidering design, because they assume that Hume's objections to analogical reasoning in classical design arguments still have force.
Yet developments in philosophy of science and the information sciences provide the grounds for a decisive refutation of both these objections. First, contemporary design theory does not constitute an argument from ignorance. Design theorists infer design not just because natural processes cannot explain the origin of biological systems, but because these systems manifest the distinctive hallmarks of intelligently designed systems--that is, they possess features that in any other realm of experience would trigger the recognition of an intelligent cause. For example, in his book Darwin's Black Box (1996), Michael Behe has inferred design not only because the gradualistic mechanism of natural selection cannot produce "irreducibly complex" systems, but also because in our experience "irreducible complexity" is a feature of systems known to have been intelligently designed. That is, whenever we see systems that have the feature of irreducible complexity and we know the causal story about how such systems originated, invariably "intelligent design" played a role in the origin of such systems. Thus, Behe infers intelligent design as the best explanation for the origin of irreducible complexity in cellular molecular motors, for example, based upon what we know, not what we don't know, about the causal powers of nature and intelligent agents, respectively.
Similarly, the "sequence specificity" or "specificity and complexity" or "information content" of DNA suggests a prior intelligent cause, again because "specificity and complexity" or "high information content" constitutes a distinctive hallmark (or signature) of intelligence. Indeed, in all cases where we know the causal origin of "high information content," experience has shown that intelligent design played a causal role.
