DNA Proves Existence of a Designer

[The Grand Nudger]

How can it rightly be called information without a mind?  They are necessarily linked by the nature of what they are.  The term information only applies to that which can be known or understood, and knowledge and/or understanding require mind.

Knowledge applies to that which can be understood and known, information is a manner of arranging data so that we can use it to gain knowledge. There's information in the safe here at my house.  Tons of it.  Neither of us possess knowledge of that information.  No mind does.

You're only expressing another argument from ignorance, and CDF has already met that quota in thread. You, personally, don't understand how material interaction can create, hold, and process data - but your lack of understanding doesn't prevent your computer from doing exactly this, nor does it constrain the reactions of organic chemistry. At a fundamental level, the very thing you refer to as a "mind" operates on the basis of material interaction in organic chemistry.

One of the more interesting facts of information processing is the existence of universal gates. Simple arrangements of matter that can replicate any boolean function without the use of any other arrangement. NAND and NOR. Here's an illustration



Any set of material interactions that can perform either of those functions could, in principle, perform any function of any digital circuit. Just takes alot of them to achieve what a more complex and specific arrangement could do. As it so happens, DNA is capable of performing the AND, NAND, OR, NOR, XOR, and XNOR functions. This simple fact of organic chemistry handily allows it to operate as an information processing device, it has more functionality, even, than would be required. That, ultimately, is the answer to your argument from ignorance. "But how can there be information in the absence of a mind?" - the presence of both universal gates with an XNOR cherry on top. This isn't even close to a full description of the functionality of DNA as it pertains to information processing, as organic chemistry acts in ways that can't be expressed by boolean functions at a scale of architecture that absolutely shits on digital circuits.

While a "mind" would be sufficient cause for the existence or apprehension of any information or information processing device, it's not a necessary cause, as any arrangement of matter that fits the description of those gates, however derived, would be just as functional as one intentionally manufactured. Thus, all that can be inferred, by necessity, in reference to these facts is that organic chemistry contains a set of material interactions capable of information processing.

The functionality of DNA (and, frankly, any comparable arrangement of matter) is a damning argument against the necessity of any mind or creator. Were it not for this functionality, it might actually take an intentional and mindful agent arranging all the blocks just so.....but since it does have this functionality, it doesn't. Just as you don't have to intentionally and mindfully arrange all of the blocks in your computer just so in order to post in this thread, and just as all of our mommies and daddies don't have to intentionally and mindfully arrange all of the blocks in our DNA in order to have us. Imagine what a shitshow that would be, lol.

Does any of this, though, dissuade you from your mistaken belief in the necessity of a mind? Were you actually inferring that from the existence of information?