DNA Proves Existence of a Designer

[CDF47]

When something exhibits specified complexity (i.e., is both complex and specified, simultaneously) one can infer that it was produced by an intelligent cause (i.e., that it was designed), rather than being the result of natural processes. The following are examples: "A single letter of the alphabet is specified without being complex. A long sentence of random letters is complex without being specified. A Shakespearean sonnet is both complex and specified. Details of living things can be similarly characterized, especially the "patterns" of molecular sequences in functional biological molecules such as DNA.

That's not a definition so much as it is an assertion of a paradigm case.  A variant of Ed Meese's comment about pornography that he "knows it" when he sees it.  In general it tells us nothing about what specification is, and as it is in effect trying to illuminate the general by reference to the specific, it can never in itself provide a working definition of what it means for information to be specified.  Citing paradigm cases offers us no clue as to how we should reason about non-paradigm cases on the basis of paradigm cases.  In particular, DNA is so unlike a Shakespearean sonnet that such a statement is as close to useless as you can possibly be.  And in particular, you don't actually have evidence that Shakespearean sonnets themselves are specified as it is possible that the sonnets were produced by an entirely random procedure.  Which of course was Dembski's first line of attack wherein he attempted to equate improbability with design.  Given the unfitness of probability as a criterion for design, he came up with the notion of specificity which he has never clearly defined, nor produced an actual application of its definition.  That you sit here with the chutzpah to suggest that you can show the meaning of specification in sufficient detail and rigor that it could be applied blindly without foreknowledge of the conclusion is nothing more than the sheerest folly of an incompetent and ignorant man.

The heart of the question is "characterized" in what way?  You haven't given us a specific definition of the specific way in which you are claiming sonnets and DNA are characterized.  That would require giving the characteristics which imply design, and those which do not.  You have not done so.

They are like a sonnet in that specific instructions are found in DNA to encode for proteins.  The information is functional.