Intelligent Life? Implications of Biotechnology

How Genetic Code Works Juan Enriquez presentation:

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/80

Genetic Code “sequenced” by huge computers

Syntax of the code is critical Can reprogram cells to re-

grow organs and alter species

An apple is an “application” that executes a program

We Already Work with Code Open the source code of a web page

This code tells the browser how to display a web pageGenetic Code

What Applications Do We Already Know?

Photoshop – PowerPoint are “executables”

Word Macro Recorder can generate code

Did These Applications “Evolve”?

We Now Realize That:Genetic Code is Identical

It is “decodable” – because it has meaning

It is more than just complex – it is intentionally structured “to do”

-- not simply “to be” An Application executes Consider: Did genetic

code begin to execute by chance?

Is Evolution Sufficient? Evolution can account for life’s complexity But evolution posits a “replicator”

Richard Dawkins “The Selfish Gene” A “Replicator” is an application It is a program, not a file It is Being for Itself

- Sartre

A Dose of Reality

Nazis Used Computers and Genetics to Control Europe

Embraced Eugenics and Social Darwinism

Kaiser Wilhelm Institute Supported by Rockefeller Foundation Verschuer and Mengele

experimented with twins The First Computers: IBM

Hollerith Machines Supported by IBM NY – not just

Germany Used for census – locate “inferiors” Created racial database – sort and

filter Helped run railroads and death

camps Source: Edwin Black – “IBM and the

Holocaust” and “The War Against the Weak”

What does it mean?What does it mean?

This is Not an Argument for Intelligent Design

This is about more than complexity – it’s about programming An anthropomorphic Creator solves nothing In terms of code, God is like a variable seeking a value Parables make sense from a modern perspective

Noah’s Ark = backup up data? As an application (we) can give the variable value as we execute our lives

The Limits of Logic From a virus to an

apple, Life is programmed

What made the first virus replicate, and begin the evolutionary process?

An Accident or… A very primitive Decision? An Application is an

entirely different being from an object

Being = Intelligence Science must begin to

address this fact

A Modest Proposal

Drop destructive primitive theologies

Understand the implications of science to avoid subjugation

Accept the reality of higher intelligence

Force scientific dogma to account for the mind

Death = Blue Screen = Reboot?