DNA Proves Existence of a Designer

[Angrboda]

Calling the information functional doesn't change anything, and function is an interpretation, not an objective fact.  The fact of the matter is that chemicals behave according to natural law, whether that's a drop of water or a life form, it's just chemicals doing what chemicals do.  If you want to call that functional, then knock yourself out, but then everything in existence has functional information and you've mooted your argument.  But even if one were to accept function as a real characteristic, you still have the problem that it has already been shown that such functional information can arise through undirected processes (see my most recent video), which means that the possession of functional information in and of itself does not indicate that it could not have arisen through natural means.  So you're still lacking reason or evidence for your claim that DNA could not arise through natural means because the possession of functional information is no bar to natural processes.  For my part, I consider function to be a constructed attribute, and not an objective one, that can be quantified by objective measures.  If you feel otherwise, then you need to explain how we determine, objectively, that something contains 'functional' information.  As a practical matter, function has taken the place of specification in design arguments because specification could not be defined.  Function, as an objective property, is no more capable of being defined.  It's just a vague, "I'll know it when I see it," subjective criterion.

So, now you have three problems:
1) No evidence or reason why functional information cannot arise through natural processes;
2) No objective definition of function or functional information; and,
3) An inability to quantify this mythical dimension of information.

Your problems are multiplying.

No, you can't just write off the information being functional like that.  When you see a manufacturing plant you know and infer it is designed.  Well we found a manufacturing plant in the construct of proteins!

I didn't just write off functional information. I even granted it ex hypothesi in one instance. What you have done, however, is simply write off my objections without providing any reasons for doing so. That doesn't work. So you still face the obstacles I mentioned and you still haven't provided reasons or evidence for your position that functional information, if there is such a thing, cannot arise through natural processes. As we've seen, clearly it can. So your objection is that certain functional information can arise through natural processes, but not other functional information. You haven't given the slightest evidence or reasons for this being true. And I could care less what you infer when you look at a manufacturing plant unless your inference is based upon sound reasoning about objective properties. Your belief that the machinery in the cell is a manufacturing plant is wrong in multiple respects. First, it's not literally a manufacturing plant, but rather, to some people, it is analogous to a manufacturing plant. In some ways it is, in some ways it isn't. In the sense that both rely on natural processes to achieve their ends, it is. In the sense that it is designed, that's the question at issue, and you can't simply rely upon certain similarities between it and a manufacturing plant to necessarily imply other properties that an actual manufacturing plant possesses. That doesn't work as a matter of logic. As a matter of persuasion, Hume stated the relevant rule regarding analogies that, inasmuch as the cases are similar, the argument has force, but inasmuch as the case analogized departs from that to which it is analogized, its argumentative force is weakened, to the point that, if the cases are grossly dissimilar, the argument has no force at all. The similarities between the processes in the cell and those in a manufacturing plant are sufficiently dissimilar that your argument that there is "[something like] a manufacturing plant" in the cell has no force at all, and is dismissed. Second, we know a manufacturing plant, or ones like it, are designed because of the similarity to other ones of its kind. We don't have other similar systems to the cell that we know are designed, so we can't make the same inference in the case of the cell because the foundation of that inference, a similarity to things known to be designed, doesn't exist. Beyond that you would have to demonstrate that we can know objectively that a manufacturing plant is designed if we have no similar cases. This you haven't done and likely cannot do, so likening it to a manufacturing plant doesn't help you as we have no way of determining that a manufacturing plant is designed which we could then apply to the cell. So the manufacturing plant analogy fails in multiple ways.

So, I'm still waiting on some reasons or evidence for your belief, and so far, despite patient interrogation over many days, you've provided none. I would be well justified in concluding that you have no reasons or evidence for your views. If you do, then provide them. And I suggest you reread my prior response because what you claim is not true, I didn't in any sense just write off functional information. First, because I didn't dismiss the concept completely. Second, because I gave reasons why the idea of functional information is problematic. You need to confront those reasons instead of simply claiming that I dismissed functional information without justification as you have done. I did not do any such thing.