All organisms contain DNA and/or RNA. And scientific knowledge about DNA has exploded in recent decades. I heard one scientist say that a piece of DNA the size of the head of a pin contains as much information as some millions of stacks of books that reach from the earth to the moon. Another analogy I heard was a small microfilm a little over one inch by one inch square that contains the entire text of a few volumes of an encyclopedia. They said that a piece of DNA the same size contains something like five hundred million times that much information. That's absolutely amazing to me. I have a hard time even wrapping my mind around that.
DNA contains an amount of information that is astronomically more dense than our most sophisticated nano-technology. This raises the question, "how does science explain this"? And again, what is information itself made of? Can it be measured?
The truth is, the amount of information that science now thinks is stored in DNA may change in the future. It could potentially be millions or billions of times more information than they now estimate. Before molecules were discovered science didn't know they existed. Once they were discovered they thought that they must be the smallest particle in the world. Then they discovered atoms and thought they might be the smallest particle. My understanding is they've since discovered even smaller particles. Who knows whether the day after tomorrow they'll discover something even smaller and so on.
The same could very well be true of the information contained in DNA. DNA is literally the code that tells a fetus, a flower or a tree how to grow into the organism that it eventually becomes. It may not always get it right because of defects or environmental strains, but Robin DNA always produces a Robin, it never produces a tree. Virtually everything about us is contained in one strand of DNA before our bodies are even formed. Before the egg is fertilized by the sperm for that matter. Where did it all come from if information is defined as a collection of knowledge or bits of data that is sent, received, understood and interpreted?
The DNA code has virtually all of the properties of language including syntax and punctuation. It's similar to a bar code only vastly more sophisticated, especially human DNA. The language of DNA only has four letters in it's alphabet, but with those four letters the instructions for every part of our bodies and our brains are spelled out, communicated and the instructions followed. Isn't that phenomenal? It's absolutely amazing.
The word 'miracle' comes to mind. How could all of that information be stored in a strand of organic material through a series of happy accidents as the theory of evolution (origin of species) claims? The fact that it is statistically impossible, based on what (relatively) little science currently knows about the density of this information puts it in the category of miracle. Yet the prevailing school of science claims that there is no such thing as a miracle. That's intriguing.
Most of the scientists who study the miracle of DNA believe that the empirical evidence proves that miracles can't happen. So someone might think, "well, maybe it's magic". Magicians perform magic for entertainment all the time. Of course the idea that it's magic is absurd because magic is a form of deception, a trick.
Could the physical material that makes up DNA have been tricked somehow through some accidental set of conditions into creating such a sophisticated, non material entity as consciousness for example? or the ability to see, touch, taste and smell even? or the ability of humans to communicate with one another and describe what something looks like, feels like, tastes like or smells like? And to interpret and process all of this information. Where did the will to do these things even come from? Can natural selection even begin to explain these things?
If all life came from a single cell that accidentally came into being, where did it get the instinct or will to struggle to survive? Was the DNA information accidentally programmed to have an instinct to live and reproduce? How can such an evolutionary process be observed and repeated by science? has it been?
I'm pretty sure it hasn't been observed, repeated, falsified or explained through the mainstream materialistic scientific process. It's a good process for learning about the physical properties of the universe, but the current model doesn't seem to be able to handle an entity like information or encoded instincts and the will, other than to acknowledge that they are there and the physical processes by which they travel.
Artificial Intelligence and the "Short Circuit"
Most people over 25 have probably seen the movie 'Short Circuit', where a robot named Number Five that's programmed with artificial intelligence has a short circuit and starts running around yelling "Number Five alive!". Some accident happens that short circuits the robot and it suddenly becomes a sentient being. Another example of this scenario is 'Data' in 'Star Trek - Next Generation", and there are probably any number of similar stories and they can be very entertaining.
I'm not real big on TV and movies but I can watch Star Trek for hours every now and then. The first time I ever saw the movie "Short Circuit" I just loved it. There aren't more than a couple handfuls of movies I can say that about. But, I wonder if a strictly logical, materialistic evolutionist would look at a story like this and say, "that could really happen some day!".
I guess there must be quite a few who think it could because I've read several articles over the years that said that it will probably happen in the near future as the science of artificial intelligence progresses. They talk of robots finding humans to be obsolete and taking over the world. Perhaps someone will program them to take over the world. LOL. Maybe the Riddler on Batman.
If a robot or android ever did actually become sentient, equipped with a genuine will of it's own and a desire to survive and procreate, I don't know how any rational mind would see it as anything short of a miracle. I would guess that if a statistician calculated the probability of that happening the numbers would be in the range of impossible. Maybe not quite as impossible as the probability that the right materials could by chance come together to create a living biological organism with the necessary information built in that gives it the will or instinct to survive and reproduce.
Miracles are miracles because they defy the laws of nature. Both of these scenarios defy the laws of nature. Everything we know about the physical laws of the universe screams that inanimate material cannot will itself into existence, even by an accident or a short circuit that defies the laws of probability and nature.
The Natural Law of Intelligence, Instinct and Will
According to real science; science that relies on observation, testing and repeatability tells us that there are certain natural laws in the universe. One of the reasons that materialistic scientists don't believe in miracles is because miracles defy the universal physical laws of nature. Since they are convinced that there is no intelligence behind existence of the universe and life, they would say that nothing can exist or happen outside of those natural physical laws.
Some might be humble enough to admit that perhaps there are more universal laws that science hasn't discovered yet. But most of them would still say that whatever natural laws do exist are all within the realm of physical, material properties like gravity, mass and energy. And we know that sound and light are caused by physical actions like vibration, fire, electricity etc. All within the material realm.
But, what about intelligence? Is there a natural law that explains things like intelligence, ideas, dreams, pride, meanness, love, will, instinct or intuition? If so, how can they be observed scientifically since they are clearly not in and of themselves physical properties? How do we measure, test, repeat or falsify these things.
One can say that we know these abstract realities exist because we can observe the various behaviors that are caused by them. That's very true. But, how different is that from saying that a god or the force "just exists because we see physical laws and order in the universe" or "because we can observe phenomenal amounts of information in the very building blocks of life (DNA)". That information is already there before it even reproduces a living organism, including the information that creates the abstract realities of intelligence, desire and instinct.
Did Science Discover Another Natural Law in DNA?
Does a caterpillar's DNA change in the cocoon? No. The same DNA that turns it into a caterpillar later turns it into a butterfly. Every process of it's life is encoded in it's DNA. What about animals and human beings? Is social behavior and the nurturing of the young encoded in our DNA? Yes. All of the basic information necessary for interacting with family, friends, enemies and society (barring any genetic anomilies and defects) are built in to our DNA's code.
Science deals with the universal laws of nature. But, the current philosophy of main stream science is that these laws involve only physical, material properties. So, for example, everything that pertains to living organisms can be explained by physical, material processes, regardless if certain properties of those organisms cannot be physically observed. Properties like will, emotion, ideas and dreams must eventually be explainable by some kind of particle or substance. If there are non-material natural laws in our universe, they will never be discovered through the current scientific model because it denies the possibility of it. Not only does it deny the possibility, but the culture that perpetuates that model actively opposes, for the most part, any suggestion that non-material laws even might exist.
The theory that there are more than 3 dimensions is quite widely accepted now, but the suggestion that things like information, will, emotion, intuition or instinct might be explained by something in one or more of those dimensions are not tolerated by the current mindset. Anything that disturbs the status quo could potentially destroy a scientists career, not to mention withdrawal of R&D funding.
It's actually amazing that they could even discover the possibility of more than three or four dimensions under this model. I suggest that it's similar to the 'flat earth' model of the dark ages (maybe not quite as absurd in modern thining, but...).
Now, I know that most scientists believe the current model is the only model that makes sense for any truly scientific discipline, and I can definitely see the logic in that. I also know that some of those scientists (the more honest ones) would admit that the scientific method is not capable of detecting anything outside of physical dimensions. This makes sense too because virtually all of the tools of science are mechanical devices that enhance the physical senses of sight (microscopes, telescopes, imaging technologies etc.), sound (various types of amplifiers etc.), touch (various sensors etc.) and smell (again sensors etc.).
As far as I know there are no instruments capable of seeing an idea or an emotion. There are instruments that can detect physiological responses to emotion or conscience (lie detectors etc.), but I'm sure most of them (i.e. lie detectors) are extremely unreliable, and they don't detect the actual information, only certain physiological responses to these thought processes. They know these things exist within the chemistry of the organism and of the brain only because they can observe the physical response that results from the information.
The elements known to science are not information, they are merely physical materials that cannot arrange themselves into a logical code or language with syntax and punctuations. Logic itself is just as intangible as a spirit being, an angel or a god (okay maybe that's a bad analogy). Scientists know logic exists, they couldn't do science without it. But the scientific discipline cannot observe it directly. Perhaps a thousand years from now they still won't be able to. Maybe they will next month.
Irrational Logic
We humans tend to take on various characteristics depending on what we do, what we see and how we spend our time. If we spend our time thinking in a certain way it will usually effect the way we live and the decisions we make.
As a computer programmer I have a tendency to think a little like a computer program. When you spend a lot of time writing "if/then" conditional codes you are likely to examine at least some of the daily choices of life with a certain amount of caution, which doesn't necessarily mean you will make better decisions, but you usually tend to approach them in a way similar to how you solve programming problems.
Computer programming isn't very forgiving. If you make even a minor mistake in the construction of your code it will virtually always cause a malfunction in the program. While you're looping through a set of conditions and options you develop an eye for errors in syntax and logic. This can transfer over to how you loop through your options in daily life. I'm sure the same is true of anything we do or think about on a regular basis.
If you spend a great deal of your time seeking entertainment and being amused, it may enhance your imagination in certain ways. It may also make it difficult for you to concentrate on non-fictional and educational things.
The mind is a powerful and mysterious thing, and contrary to popular belief the majority of it's wonders are still a mystery to science. We may be able to measure the results of an idea, but I'm pretty sure there hasn't been a scale made yet that can weigh one.
Think of it this way. If you erased all of the information on your hard drive, would the hard drive weigh any less? Or if you could erase a chunk of information from your brain cells, would your brain weigh less?
We will need an entirely different way of measuring (and a different mindset) if we want to find a way to study these things that do exist, but have no physically measurable properties other than physical responses to them. That would perhaps mean that the current model of the Scientific method needs to first grasp some of the properties of the other dimensions that many scientists today believe they have (theoretically) discovered. And perhaps then they will truly understand the implications of a collection of elements containing vast amounts of grammatical information complete with syntax and punctuation marks.
Food for thought!
