Highlights from Telic Thoughts

Some posts and comments at Telic Thoughts:

Retina Design which links to Is the Backwards Human Retina Evidence of Poor Design? from ICR and Eye Evolution from Viewpoint.

A Materialist Red Herring which has this to say:

The origin of life is a dilemna that has defied attempts at resolution since Darwin. Sure we have a hodgepodge of theories as to how it went down. We also have identified properties of cellular biochemicals thought by OOLers to justify their faith in chemical pathways to cells. Their faith is never so evident as when critiques of their beliefs are branded God in the gaps. The cliche reveals a number of things about those who use it. Lack of originality for one. It is one of the first cliches learned by critics and is subsequently mindlessly tossed about. Ever more so when a telling blow is landed on a theoretical weak spot.

It is also a cliche well suited for those who would presume to know the thoughts of another or simply ignore well known theistic views in the interest of maintaining their own prejudice and the comfort zone that theological ignorance affords them. Most of those who believe in God attribute the origin of all natural laws and natural phenomenon to God. They do not look for gaps thinking that God is detectable in them. That's the straw man that defines the mindset of critics.

But the most interesting aspect of the cliche is how it is used to hide a sleight of the materialist hand. If materialism is to maintain the fiction that it is sustained by scientific data then it must at least attempt to separate empirically derived assertions from assertions not sustained by empirical data. To assume favorable data exists and has not yet been found is to demonstrate faith in an outcome in lieu of an empirically grounded argument. It also places a philosophical bias into an unknown and asks that discernment be averted in the interest of maintaining an unverified expectation. Don't mention the inadaquacy of evidence or the fact that the emperor is wearing no clothes.

RNA Polymerase II

Some comments:

This one by Salvador Cordova.

This one from Rock:

I don't get it. Protein production is ternary, and that's somehow for our "convenience"?

I also understood that in the nested hierarchy of formal languages, DNA-sequences belong to the class of extended context-free grammars.

For our convenience?

This comment wherein Rock turns the tables:

You know, JW, chemistry bears an “uncanny” resemblance to coding. If I recall correctly (and I’m sure you will correct me—you are a chemist?), modern chemistry really began with the recognition of the existence of a chemical element; that elements are distinguishable by common properties, such as mass, weight, volume, density, etc.; and that elements combine in definite mathematical proportions.

If anyone didn’t know what a “code” is before, I just told you!

A code is a finite set of elements, related by common properties that vary amongst the elements (including mass, weight, volume, density, etc.), and which are combined according to a set of rules (grammar) that are summarized in terms of definite mathematical proportions (such as in the case of the DNA-code, ~3/1).

Let’s say I am a code-designer (not God) and I restrict myself (for the purposes of practical application) to the set of chemical elements. Am I also restricted to use chemistry’s grammatical rules?