The Invasion of the replicators

Although I think Gleick's book [The Information] is informative, and well worth reading, I have problems with the approach he decided to take. When discussing the origin of life on earth he ignores the seeming unanswerable objections to this happening by some chance accident. I feel he's being dishonest here, as he just pretends it's no big deal. He doesn't even admit no one know how this could have happened. He simply pretends one of the many OOL scenarios is correct. End of story.

I don't feel ignoring problems is a proper way to write science. He just ignores the problem of where all the information (complex, specified) for living organisms came from. I find this odd to say the least, coming in a book about information.

Quotes and comments on 'The Information' by James Gleick;

1. 'The history of life begins with the accidental appearance of molecules complex enough to serve as building blocks—replicators.' [1.]

- Gleick accepts the idea that all life on earth is a chemical accident. Complexity happens by accident in this account. I thought science was supposed to be about finding laws. I don't see how anyone can believe living organisms 'emerged' from inert matter by accident.

He states this as a fact. It's not a fact, it's a story. No one was there. No one can know this. If this passage were written honestly it would read; 'according to the most popular and current neo-darwinian thinking, life began with the accidental appearance...'

The ability to replicate (reproduce) has it's source in random chance and accident in this scenario. This is an amazing miracle if true. Where does the information come from for this astounding ability? There's a great mystery here, and the average e. just skips merrily over it; pretending as if he's explained it, when all he's done is tell us it happened. (Apparently no explanation for this miracle is needed.) What we have here (in this scenario) is the accidental production of a complex molecule; a molecule that contains both information and information on how to replicate. Am I the only one who sees this as impossible? We don't get a hint (in the textbooks) of how this happened. Not a whiff. Writers just pretend it's all a simple matter and an undeniable fact. (Is this a good way to write science?)

Now I assume this mythical molecule contained DNA, so that it could replicate. So where did the DNA come from? Where did the code come from? What wrote the code? You'd think these would be questions that need to be discussed, but no, they're ignored. I guess this is all a rhetorician can do when they can't answer a question. You'd think any writer with integrity would at least admit they have no idea how this could happen, but I guess that's too much to ask in our politicized culture.
- I guess the idea is that some molecule emerged that didn't require DNA to replicate; but this still doesn't explain where DNA came from, where the coding system came from.

Replicate;
1. To reproduce or make an exact copy or copies of (genetic material, a cell, or an organism).

2. 'Replicators could exist long before DNA, even before proteins.' [1.]

- Could they? Is that a fact or another story? I don't see any way this can be proved. Certainly no one saw it.
Can you have proteins without DNA? I thought DNA held the code (instructions) for creating proteins?

The warrant for this 'fact' of evolution is a scenario dreamt up by
Alexander Cairns-Smith. So his story depends for its warrant on another story. Apparently this is how Darwinism works. (It's stories all the way down folks.)

He gives some alternate scenarios and then says 'either way' it all happened. ie. as if one of these stories Has to be true; as if there couldn't be another explanation (ie. ID) The idea one of a collection of scenarios has to be true is a simple fallacy. (Does Gleick not realize this?)
This whole OOL scenario requires huge amounts of complex, specified information, and the materialists never tell us how this information came about. It's a taboo subject apparently. (i.e. ''we know it happened, so it doesn't matter how it happened...")

- That Gleick doesn't deal with the problems in the materialist OOL scenario, makes this a dishonest book. Materialists seem incapable of discussing and admitting the huge holes in their theory. (They're certainly unwilling to do so.) Is this any way to do science? This is taking the coward's way out. ("Mankind cannot bear much reality," the poet said.) We can't answer the critics so let's ban them, we can't answer them so let's pretend they don't exist... pretend we know how it happened, pretend it's an undeniable fact, pretend we're doing science and not just inventing stories. ("I am the great pretender, pretending that I'm doing well...") This is sad, stuff. Why is it these people can't be honest? Are they going to go to their graves telling these lies, never admitting the truth?

3. 'The body is a colony of genes.' [2.]

- Is it? This is the chicken and the egg story again. [5.] This isn't a fact, it's an interpretation... a way of looking at things. In my opinion it's simply false to say the body is a colony of genes. Even for an evolutionist it's obvious the animal is also a single unit... so it's simply a fallacy to say it IS a colony of genes. This claim is a denial of creation, where an animal is seen as having been designed.

E. theory claims body plans (different creatures) are accidental assemblages of once independent organisms... that somehow managed to find a way to work together. (God knows how; but we're certain it happened this way.) What the heart was before various parts came together (at some kind of heart conference I guess) I'd like to know. I find the idea the various organ systems in the body came together by chemical accident comical.

The above is not a scientific statement. (This is surprising for someone who's devoted themselves to writing on science.) We don't observe that a body is a colony of genes. What we observe, what the data consists of, are genes within the cell, within the body. The word 'is' in this sentence has nothing to do with empirical science. We don't see the 'is' part of this statement. The 'is' part is interpretation, and not scientific.

He talks as if genes were once independent organisms. I see no evidence for this. What we see today is that genes are never independent. I don't see any reason to believe things were ever any different. I believe genes were always dependent (body inhabiting) entities. I believe they were part of the original design of the original creation. ie. that animal kinds were created with genes (DNA) already intact. I can't prove it, but it's the only explanation that makes sense to me.

4. “Selection favors those genes which succeed in the presence of other genes,” says Dawkins, “which in turn succeed in the presence of them." [3.]

- More nonsense from the grandfather of personification. The word favors in this statement has no scientific content. What we observe is that some genes succeed. That's all the data that's here. The rest is Darwinian spin.

There is no entity called selection, and there is no 'favoring' going on. Selection has been reified and given a magic wand. This is not empirical science. (For someone who claims to be defending 'true' science against creationist non-science; Dawkins cares little for being empirical, to restricting himself to actual observation. Most of his writing isn't scientific at all; it's merely a Darwinian spin on things.
e.g. To claim man is a robot slave of genes isn't remotely scientific. In fact it's anti-scientific. That's not an observation, but a Darwinian interpretation.

5. 'To say that a replicator manages to survive for eons is to define the replicator as all the copies considered as one. Thus the gene does not “grow senile,” Dawkins declared.
"It is no more likely to die when it is a million years old than when it is only a hundred. It leaps from body to body down the generations, manipulating body after body in its own way and for its own ends, abandoning a succession of mortal bodies before they sink in senility and death. [4.]

- This is fantasy, not science. No one observes this. Isn't science supposed to be about observation? He's merely defined his 'master of survival' gene into existence. It has no existence outside his definition.

This is gross personification... really ugly stuff. A gene leaping from body to body; a gene with goals or ends. Pure piffle; nothing but Darwinian storytelling.

6. 'This is where life breaks free from its material moorings. (Unless you already believed in the immortal soul.) The gene is not an information-carrying macromolecule. The gene is the information. [4.]

- This is what the materialist has to say isn't it? This is the only way he can deal with information within a materialist system. Since m. claims that only the physical is real (and part of science) he must claim information is physical, not immaterial. What Dawkins is doing with his fairy story is trying to save materialism (i.e. from the new threat of information theory). As always, his goal in 'science' is to defend atheism.

To do so he concocts a view of information that goes counter to all other views. His view of information isn't remotely scientific. He's not trying to understand the universe; he's trying to defend materialism. (I guess we could say that Richard Dawkins is atheism's way of preserving itself :=}

I have no idea how a materialist can claim 'life' (a reification) breaks free from its material moorings. That makes no sense to me. That's incoherent as far as I'm concerned.

7. 'The physicist Max Delbrück wrote in 1949, “Today the tendency is to say ‘genes are just molecules, or hereditary particles,’ and thus to do away with the abstractions.” Now the abstractions returned. [4.]

- Abstractions aren't physical are they? Therefore (according to classical materialism) they can't be a subject of science. So we have the comical spectacle of Dawkins defending materialism by the use of abstractions (reifications, personifications, etc.).

8. 'The quavers and crotchets inked on paper are not the music. Music is not a series of pressure waves sounding through the air; nor grooves etched in vinyl or pits burned in CDs; nor even the neuronal symphonies stirred up in the brain of the listener. The music is the information. [4.]

- Really? I don't think so. Music isn't any one of these things, it's all of them. It's reductionistic and fallacious to say music IS the information. That's certainly not a scientific view. It's a limited and partial interpretation of music.
If you're going to say this about music, you'll have to say it about everything. You'll end up saying the world is information; the universe is information. Everything is information. This is a fallacy. You can't equate the universe with the information embedded in it. Life isn't that simple. The universe exists on many levels. There's the physical level, the level of energy, the level of information, the conscious level, the unconscious level, the microscopic level, the macroscopic level, the animal level, the human level, and so on.

If everything is information, then you have to say the universe consists of information replicating itself. This is a profoundly anti-human way of thinking. This is reductionism with a vengence.

Summary;
- If you know what Dawkins' goal is (to defend materialism) you can have a good idea what his take will be on any idea. It will be the take (spin) that best defends materialism. What he's done in his career is take the classic evidence for theism and try to formulate accounts of this evidence that make sense in terms of materialism.
e.g. take the subject of design; he defends materialism by saying what creationists think is design is merely the appearance of design. This isn't a scientific observation but merely a piece of rhetoric. (Something he's adept at.) You can't disprove his interpretation (at least not easily) and so he has what he considers a plausible account of design that defends materialism. (i.e. What appears to be design is simply the mechanical working out of natural selection.) He takes the concept of a (creative) natural selection from Darwin, and adds his bit of rhetoric to the mix.

These mythical replicators are more like the aliens in SF than they are real. They're products of the same culture specific imagination. The same kind of people who invent aliens invent replicators. There's a similar lack of rigor involved, a similar soaring on the wings of unfettered imagination. They invaded the earth and left behind a brood of monsters; monsters who have turned mankind into robot slaves. (So sayeth Richard Dawkins.)

Mike Johnson [frfarer at gmail.com]

Notes;
1. The Information - James Gleick/p.294
2. p.295
3. p. 296
4. p. 298
5. According to Samuel Butler, a chicken is an egg's way of producing an egg.
6. I haven't finished the book so maybe he does address this issue later, but he should have addressed it in this section on Origins.
- There is quite a long list of materialists (within the scientific community) that have admitted that the origin of life remains a mystery, so Gleick can't claim he had no one he could quote.
7. I take the view genes don't propagate, organisms propagate. (You can't propagate if you don't have propagating equipment, can you :=} Neither this view, nor the view Dawkins espouses is strictly empirical, although mine is the more natural, the more intuitive.
8. When I'm talking of genes I'm referring to the human genes; the genes in the human genome.