Hi again CTD

Assuming changes weren't the result of pre-programmed information, they'd be mutations. This is the factor that some evolutionists would have us overlook.
No a mutation is a change in DNA from the original code. This can be copying errors of many sorts, damage or even programmed changes. If a copy of a DNA strand is not the same as the original or the same as it was earlier that’s a mutation. A mutation isn’t some weird, magic thing its just DNA that is altered from its original either as it is copied or subsequently. The important mutations for this discussion are those which affect germ line DNA as all mutations do in Bacteria as they have no other kind.

That some of these changes are programmed is not controversial, that the full range of invention observed in lab experiments and in the wild is programmed is unsupported by any evidence or theory. Or is that an idea that falls out of skunk funk?

Which is just another way of saying it's unfalsifiable. We can only observe in the present, and have no access to ever.
This was a rhetorical comment, not a challenge you were meant to take seriously; we have already observed quite a few beneficial mutations so proving that none ever have or ever could occur was not a challenge I was seriously suggesting you try to meet. As for this making ToE unfalsifiable, is it unfalsifiable that the sky is blue, or is it a truth that is beyond reasonable doubt. Do you really think it makes a theory unfalsifiable to point out that the evidence used to support it is present? I guess that’s true but then it is expected that it will be impossible to falsify true theories so that it is hard to falsify this one is what I would expect as I suspect it is at least very close to the truth.

Yes I understand that you don’t like the definition I’ve used for vestigial organs but this is not a new definition though many don’t really understand it. The definition I gave has been in common use among scientists for over 100 years so far though many lay writers still get it very wrong.

What is talkdeceptions?

I explained how it is very much relevant. If a text contains two or more messages, rendering any of them illegible is not 'neutral'.
Yes true but we know that DNA is transcoded to mRNA from Start Codon to Stop Codon for DNA that codes proteins. We can easily enough work out where these codons are with a computer and so we can know which pieces of DNA are only read in one direction (that’s the vast majority by the way) and we can find segments that are at least potentially read in both directions. You throw out the idea of DNA being read in both directions as if the transcription machinery of our cells can just skip a beat and change direction on a whim, this is false, transcription in two directions is only possible when the necessary start and stop codons are in place and the transcription machinery will still start at a start Codon and stop at a stop Codon and it will never change directions mid stream. That we know that there are many segments that, no matter how you read them, have only the necessary start and stop Codons to be read in one direction shows that there are many segments in which the silent mutations I have mentioned are indeed silent. Still as I said it’s not a challenge to ToE if this were overturned by future evidence, it would simply change the balance of beneficial/neutral/detrimental mutations. The exact ratios of these mutations is not foundational to ToE only the existence of beneficial ones is foundational.

It is a language written with letters. I didn't invent the analogy - it's already been used by scientists.
Sure it has but those who do so understand the limitations of the analogy and so they would not push it beyond its limits as you have done. If you suggest that DNA can be likened to a book with chapters on building arms, legs, hearts, blood cells etc you can usefully illustrate to a naive audience how mutation and recombination works, if you try to suggest, that like a book any letter change alters the meaning of the text you have failed to grasp how DNA works and so the limits of this very useful analogy.

You assume CUU is a synonym for CUC, but who's to say it isn't a misspelling which can still be read? Unless you know the correct spellings, you have no idea if the information has degraded or not.
DNA is a digital code, three bases or one Codon codes for one protein; if the protein is unaltered then the code has been changed silently. DNA has a great deal of redundancy, that’s an observed fact, so we know that many changes do not affect the proteins produced. In what way has the code been degraded if the resultant proteins are unaltered? In such cases the changes have no practical effect on the organism carrying them. What you are suggesting doesn’t actually seem to mean anything. Organism runs on proteins, silent mutations don’t change proteins so they have no effect on the organism by definition and in observations in the lab and in the wild.

Lets try this from your letter analogy, lets suppose that we have an instruction book on how to make a widget. The book repeatedly miss spells the word ‘can’ as ‘cna’ yet the reader is smart enough to understand this error and compensate for it so the final product is a widget without errors. In what way has the misspelling affected the utility of the code? The information it contained has been conveyed correctly regardless and that is, after all, the whole purpose of such codes.

All the best till next time CTD

In Reason

Russell