Saturday, December 14, 2013

Scientists discover a second hidden CODE in the human DNA: More evidence for intelligent design?


According to this report in TIME Magazine:

"Scientists have marveled at the ingenuity of the DNA code since it was first deciphered in the early sixties, but now it appears that there is much more to it than previously known.

A research team at the University of Washington has discovered a second code hidden within the DNA, written on top of the other.

Now we know that this basic assumption about reading the human genome missed half of the picture,” said team leader Dr. John Stamatoyannopoulos.

Whereas the first code describes how proteins are made, this second language instructs the cell on how genes are to be controlled. The discovery, published in Science on Friday, will enable improved diagnoses and treatments of disease"

So, we have now more evidence for an extremely complex informational process in the DNA, which includes:

1)A code for the making of proteins (this was already known)

2)A code for a second language which instructs the cell on how genes are controlled (the new scientific discovery).

But language and information always come, as far we know, from some kind of intelligence. And the development and complexity of such language is proportional to the level of intelligence in question (e.g. the human language is a lot more complex than the language used by dolphins) Otherwise, it wouldn't be a language at all. 

Language is teleological, namely, it is goal-directed to a certain goal and is intended to convey some information, which could be decoded by another intelligence which understands the codification. The whole process is information-based.

It is hard to see exactly where we could put such teleological and intelligent processes in a world which is, as philosophical naturalists think, wholly governed by brute, blind, random, mindless and mechanical (i.e. non-teleological and non-intelligent) forces and entities.

This new scientific evidence clinches the argument from design in biology.

I think skeptic David Hume (who's championed by atheists) was right when he wrote:

The whole frame of nature bespeaks an intelligent author; and no rational enquierer can, after serious reflection, suspend his belief a moment with regard to the primary principles of genuine Theism and Religion... Were men led into the apprehension of invisible, intelligent power by a contemplation of the works of nature, they could never possibly entertain any conception but of one single being, who bestowed existence and order on this vast machine, and adjusted all its parts, according to one regular plan or connected system . . .All the things of the universe are evidently of a piece. Every thing is adjusted to every thing. One design prevails throughtout the whole. And this uniformity leads the mind to acknowledge one author" (The Natural History of Religion, pp. 21, 26, emphasis in blue added).

More recently, the defender of philosophical atheism for more than 4 decades and who then left such position in favour of theism, Antony Flew comments about his conversion:

There were two factors in particular that were decisive. One was my growing empathy with the insight of Einstein and other noted scientists that there had to be an Intelligence behind the integrated complexity of the physical Universe. The second was my own insight that the integrated complexity of life itself – which is far more complex than the physical Universe – can only be explained in terms of an Intelligent Source. I believe that the origin of life and reproduction simply cannot be explained from a biological standpoint despite numerous efforts to do so. With every passing year, the more that was discovered about the richness and inherent intelligence of life, the less it seemed likely that a chemical soup could magically generate the genetic code. The difference between life and non-life, it became apparent to me, was ontological and not chemical. The best confirmation of this radical gulf is Richard Dawkins' comical effort to argue in The God Delusion that the origin of life can be attributed to a "lucky chance." If that's the best argument you have, then the game is over. No, I did not hear a Voice. It was the evidence itself that led me to this conclusion

The new evidence for a second hidden code in the DNA, which is a discovery that Hume and Flew couldn't  know, reinforces, refines and updates their arguments.

It seems it is naturalistic atheism which is increasingly becoming pushed against the ropes by the scientific evidence.

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