I think you're tending to parrot the ideas and theories of those that you perceive to be authorities on the subject rather than use those theories to enable you to think for yourself. IC is, IMO, a term that is used by ID proponents to avoid saying "ID" outright but still make the case for ID. Scientists like Behe have to do that and watch what they say in navigating the neo-Darwinist wolves. WE do not and should not.
Perhaps giving other examples of the above can help.
One would be starting here:
Session 23 March 2019 (there was some discussion and you backed down, but there were a few things actually unanswered, and at least from my POV, you seemed to just be quoting Behe, not thinking things through.)
Another one is this:
Darwin's Black Box - Michael J. Behe and Intelligent Design
Let me try, not for the sake of arguing, but as an example of when you go into that "mode". I hesitate because even though it's a subject I know a bit better, I still have huge gaps, but I'll do my best:
One of the other questions that came up and which we discussed had to do with the nature of DNA as a language. Here's the gist: DNA is largely arbitrary, like any code. There's nothing intrinsic about the structure of DNA that codes for proteins. Perhaps theoretically it's possible to have a slightly differently composed DNA structure that could also code for proteins. But the thing about proteins themselves is that there doesn't seem to be anything arbitrary about them. Specific sequences of amino acids are required in order for the protein to fold into a particular shape. And only some of those folded shapes will perform any actual function in an organism.
First, if you search a bit, there are like five different theories about language being comparable to DNA. Each angle is different depending on how they divide the parts. And at least from what I've read so far, I think the analogy is weak, and that stems from the fact that SO much is still unknown about DNA, and about languages.
Second, scientific "authorities" and our limited observations would have us believe that DNA is largely arbitrary. But we don't really know that. "Arbitrary" and "random" are words often used when people can't explain something. It is used VERY often when referring to languages, yet, some authors like Abraham A. Abehsera make really good points about them NOT being arbitrary at all, but rather having visible rules whose mechanism is not well understood. So, what meets the eye is not all there is. Sometimes it can be a sign of Design too (e.g., even the mutation said to be "natural" by Behe and others could be part of a design, a calculated trade-off by the Designer. Think of people born with specific mutations -or changes via epigenetics-, and take into account their life paths, lessons, etc. We can't know for sure that their mutations don't serve any purpose.)
This is very similar to the structure of human-created languages. First, there is the element of arbitrariness: you can use any sounds or letters as the basis for your language.
That's what some linguists say. Yet, it's not so arbitrary when you look at a) the physiological limitations within which sounds are produced, and b) the similarities across languages that, were it all arbitrary, would never exist, c) the patterns across languages (and here you talked only about English, so it's very a very limited view).
But the meanings (functions) are necessarily linked to reality: the things of our experience, like objects, actions, thoughts, etc. And proteins are very much like words. For instance, take five-letter words. There are 26^5 possible combinations of letters to be made in English. But only a fraction of those are words, just like only a fraction of amino-acid sequences will form actual proteins.
OK, but many of those "non-words" are words in other languages, and follow rules outside the scope of individual languages.
And just like with proteins, the majority of 'mutations' to words will harm their function. But even then, they have a degree of redundancy. Take the five-letter word 'first'. Even if you change it to 'forst', you still might be able to grasp the meaning of 'first' if it's used in context. Maybe it's a foreign person trying to write it or say it. So if they say, "I want to do this forst, and that second", it's at least intelligible. Like a protein, it suffered a degradative mutation, but it still gets the job done, just not as well. Same goes for typos. You can usually recognize a typo as a typo and grasp the intended meaning. So the misspelled word still serves the correct function, just not as well as the word in its pure form.
Ok, but that is not so simple. There are different degrees of intelligibility. Words like "a" and "the", for example, can be omitted and easily patched up by the brain because they don't carry as much meaning as a noun, a personal pronoun, a verb, etc. (Some languages don't use them at all, even.) When you look at several languages at once, what looks like misspelled words in one language may be a whole chain of words in another.
Longer words have even more redundancy (keep in mind that proteins can be hundreds or even thousands of 'letters' long). Take the word "antiestablishmentarianism". Make a single point mutation, and just like first/forst, the word is still readable: "antiestablushmentarianism". But change just 4 letters and it becomes practically unreadable: "untixstablisymentariacism." Same goes for genes: most point mutations are neutral or damaging, and multiple point mutations make the protein completely worthless.
But what about beneficial mutations? Words have them too. Change the final letter from 'm' to 't' and you have a new word with a new function: antiestablishmentarianist. Such mutations follow certain grammatical rules, in this case having to do with word endings, or suffixes. Just as in proteins, they won't work just anywhere - only in specific places.
I don't think that's an improvement (beneficial mutation), but a neutral change within the same semantic field. The first word is not better than the second or vice-versa. They are many changes within what some would call the
paradigm and the syntagm. You are talking here about a morphological change, not an addition, therefore not a "beneficial mutation".
You can visualize this 'possibility space' (the collection of all possible sequences) as a big circle. Within this circle is a small circle of only those possibilities that can perform a function (even if they can't do it very well, like 'forst'). And within that circle you will have points representing the 'purest' forms of words (or proteins). In the case of 'antiestablishmentarianism', there may only be 2 fully functional words represented as 2 points. (You could also represent this as mountain peaks on a graph, like Doug Axe does in his book Undeniable - the mountains represent the family of related words/proteins, and the peaks represent the most functional individual words/proteins within the family.)
You lost me at this analogy, and that's not quite how Axe describes the phenomenon, IMO.
Random mutation can move a word from its pure form to various possible degraded forms easily. That's what Behe shows for proteins in his new book. But it's also possible (just not as likely) to move to a new word with a new function randomly - as long as the word is in the same 'family', as in the case of the '-ism' to '-ist' above. The problem is that it's impossible to wander from one family to another randomly. You can't degrade 'antiestablishmentarianism' letter by letter until you get 'psychophysicotherapeutics'.
You seem to be conflating terms: First, you cannot know that it's "random" in the case of biology (and I'd argue that it's not that random either where languages are concerned, but that it may have to do with what the "antenna" picks up from the information field.). Second, 'antiestablishmentarianism' and 'psychophysicotherapeutics' are technically in the same family: they are both nouns. The transformations into different families you are speaking of aren't visible in language except when it's obvious (like "happy" -adjective-, happily-adverb- and happiness-noun). But they exist, and I think they do by Design/antenna receptivity. Again, Abraham A. Abhesera did a great job in finding the missing links. Certain sound combinations are universal when it comes to representing the same or similar concepts, the "collective unconscious". It's a "mystery" (linguists would say it's arbitrary!), but some rules can be seen if you step away from one particular author or a few.
One way to visualize this is to imagine these words and their variations as two small circles, like we did above, with each point representing a version of the word that is one letter different than the one next to it. Now imagine these circles with are randomly placed on a very large globe the size of the earth. What are the chances of randomly wandering from one circle to the other? It's impossible for all intents and purposes. (The sizes and distances are just a guess - I didn't do the calculations necessary, but it gets across the idea - Axe actually did the calculations for a related example in his book, so read that for a mathematically correct example!)
I kept waiting to see something in Axe's book that made your statement make more sense in this context, and I didn't find it.
He talks about it to explain the importance of repetition and intent. I don't see how it connects to what you are saying.
A better point of comparison would be the way Axe explained Chinese ideograms. Except that their complexity is nothing compared to living organisms.
The problem with that Darwinists is that they assume that it MUST be possible to get from 'antiestablishmentarianism' to 'psychophysicotherapeutics', and to all other words. But that would only be possible if the majority of protein sequences (unlike words) were functional. They have to assume that there are way more functional proteins than there actually are, as if you could just change 3 letters in a large word and get a new word. Change a different 2 letters and you get a completely different word, etc. But that's not the way it works. Functional protein sequences are RARE, just like words are.
If you know several languages, you can see that practically any 3 letter combination CAN be "functional", depending on the system and how you look at them. And there seems to be a universal thread tying them together. Just because they aren't part of English, for example, it doesn't mean they are garbage. The same applies to all that hasn't been discovered by science yet. And even in "garbage", a lot can be discovered about the universal rules of what for some reason or another, isn't "allowed" in the code.
Anyways, that discussion led to the observation that the 'language' of proteins seems to be somehow intrinsic in nature. Because of the nature of the molecules that make up the proteins, there are certain possibilities for form and function which we observe as life-forms: body plans of various types, different kinds of tissues, organs, cells, etc. Whatever intelligence 'created' DNA, they did not create those possibilities - they merely utilized or discovered them. The possibilities were already inherent in the properties of the elements. But here's another kicker: they can only be expressed or actualized through the use of an arbitrary code like DNA! What does THAT imply about the nature of the universe?! We have to wrestle not only with the question of who created the DNA language, but also with the question of who created the protein language.
See above. I don't think this is logical. Maybe (just maybe!) DNA is not be that arbitrary, but rather like an overruling "universal language", and protein language is like each individual language?
But it goes somewhat deeper. Intelligent Design people also talk about the fine tuning of the cosmos, and how it gives the appearance of design - various physical constants that must be their precise values, in combination with other precise values, otherwise the universe basically falls apart. Well, the periodic table of elements must also be 'fine tuned' to some degree, in order to make amino acids and their combination into proteins possible. It's not just a given that any variation on the periodic table will be able to produce specific macromolecules with higher functions. Basically, it appears as if from the very bottom up, the universe is designed for the possibility of life. But between the level of inorganic matter and organic matter, there must be an infusion of information and intelligence to bridge the gap. From the perspective of chemistry left to its own devices, life is possible. But intelligence is a necessary condition to actually bring it about.
Yes, but this contradicts your "arbitrariness". Any design includes having a PURPOSE, designing a system of rules, syntax, etc., leaving room for the language to be "alive" (create neologisms, changes of meaning in context - pragmatics- clauses within clauses, different expressions of time and space within the boundaries of our reality, etc.) New letters aren't added because of certain limitations, yet, there are actually MANY different ways of pronouncing the letter "t", "d", "s", "l", etc. New grammar rules aren't created, but some are corrupted or adapted due to the way people start using them, or because of untraceable reasons. The whole system is alive and way more complex than anyone has even been able to explain. Freedom within a structure.
I suspect that if there is an actual parallel to draw between DNA and languages, is that languages were also part of the Intelligent Design, and don't have much to do with "evolution" as understood by darwinists. There are simply too many parallels and complex structures that to me say they have more to do with how human are wired to interact with the information field (and how they are designed), than anything they would be able to create. In fact, they tried (e.g. Esperanto), and the result is nothing like a living language. They do it with computer languages, and again, it's not quite like human languages. So, that says that humans haven't really gone from making simple animal sounds to being able to making sentences like the ones you are I can utter.
Anyway, maybe this is not the best example, but it's the best one that came to mind as a warning against letting oneself be too easily convinced by authorities, and being under the illusion that one is close to having "the last word on the matter". Not knowing several linguistic structures, you are missing a big part of the puzzle. Imagine what we don't know on top of that! Science is barely starting to understand the alphabet, but they claim they can recite poetry. False. We have to keep in mind our (the Cs) cosmogony, at least in theory, and be open-minded about what we learn. It's also okay to let your imagination fly, but you have to be careful that it doesn't turn into a futile intellectual gymnastics where you are merely quoting or missquoting some authority to feel some sense of order instead of accepting how little we still know.
A big FWIW.
