1. Functional Information
2. Encoder
3. Error Correction
4. Decoder
DNA contains multi-layered information and metadata (information about how to use the information in the context of the related data) and is a more efficient storage medium than anything we’ve created. So here you have instructional data that must be translated to perform specific functions at specific times (a system that describes itself and interprets its description). This is a language that codes precise plans in a very specific order necessary to manifest this amazing thing we call life.
Consider the following posted by Eric Anderson at UncommonDescent:
In the euphoria of the tremendous success of the Apollo missions in the 1970’s, NASA commissioned several studies about what might be next: some relating to immediate projects, some more long term, some on the visionary edges of science fiction.One such study, presented at a conference held in the summer of 1980 belongs in the latter category. It was entitled “Advanced Automation for Space Missions,” and spans nearly 400 pages.
A somewhat more digestible web version was made available by Robert Freitas, one of the authors, here.
The central idea was to lay out what would be required for an automated robotic fleet to explore the galaxy. This is, it must be confessed, an impressive effort to put this much thought and effort into the actual details.
Yet even after the tremendous work and thought put into how to make a truly autonomous self-replicating robotic exploration system, there are hints that it still might not work without occasional intelligent guidance and intervention along the way.
In addition to possible intelligent guidance and intervention at certain stages, Freitas recognized the difficulty of closing the loop on the self-replication cycle itself. He calls this the “closure problem.”
This closure problem includes the difficulty of getting all of the materials processing machines, chemical elements, process chemicals, alloys, etc. in place. In particular, he noted that difficult items to close include some “hard-to-manufacture but lightweight items such as microelectronics . . . precision instruments and others which may not be cost-effective to produce via automation off-Earth” in the near term. Even after significant “bootstrapping”, Freitas notes that something on the order of 90-96% closure might be attainable.
90-96% is of course impressive. But in the context of what would actually be required for a truly autonomous self-replicator sent to a new planet to reproduce and explore, it isn’t quite there. 96% won’t get you 96% of the next generation. It won’t get you past the first generation.
As someone who has also spent some time analyzing what would be required for true self-replication in a real-world environment, I am impressed with Freitas’ efforts, nearly 50 years ago. And the other striking impression that comes to mind is just how difficult a proposition self-replication is.
The ability to send nano-scale self-replicators to Earth with the ability to faithfully and successfully populate the Earth is an engineering feat almost beyond comprehension. Anyone with a rational understanding of what we are witness to in biology would be inclined to a profound sense of awe and wonder at the genius behind it.
Self-replication lies at the end of an incredibly detailed, inter-related, integrated, precision process, driven at every step by deep levels of information.
The naive and evidence-free evolutionary narrative, on the other hand, has everything completely upside down. It isn’t just that the materialist creation story hasn’t yet discovered the naturalistic origin of biology. It isn’t just that important details have yet to be filled in. It isn’t even (as most critics of abiogenesis realize) that it won’t work.
No. The problem is deeper than that. Evolution’s claim that self-replication is the first attribute of a living organism, that self-replication is the beginning of the creative process is not just mistaken — it is utterly, completely backwards from the engineering realities. I discussed this fundamental issue previously, here - Thinking Upside Down – The Abiogenesis Paradigm
According to Genomics entrepreneur and researcher Craig Venter:
“All living cells that we know of on this planet are ‘DNA software’-driven biological machines comprised of hundreds of thousands of protein robots, coded for by the DNA, that carry out precise functions.”
The short version of this is that, while it’s impossible to prove God exists, it is equally impossible to prove He doesn’t.
But the secret every Believer has is that God doesn’t NEED to be “proven.” The belief is rooted in Faith, not evidence. We believe because we choose to believe, not because anyone has “proved” the object of our belief. After all, who would prove the existence of a Creator besides the Creation itself?
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Evolution is just change. It didn’t begin with living systems. Is hydrogen so complicated that it required intelligence to design it or did it simply evolve from the rules described by quantum field theory and the wave equation? Are stars, galaxies, and planets so complicated that they required intelligence to design and sustain them or did they simply evolve from the rules of gravitation and matter? Are the elements of organic chemistry so complicated they required intelligence to design them or did they evolve from gravitation and the nuclear processes in supernova? Chemical reactions don’t require intelligence to produce complex compounds they just follow the conservation laws and entropy. If all these fundamental evolutionary processes occur naturally why do we then need to inject divine intervention to explain the replicating chemistry of life given the vastness of time?
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