Chance and necessity can't build a code

A powerful case can be made that such a formal code process only arises from intelligence.

"Formal algorithmic prescriptive information (PI) is the key to any successful computer program, including the programs within life. ... PI involves formal choices at decision points that cannot be generated by randomness or law(necessity)." Johnson, Programming of Life, p39

"Biological information is not a substance ... biological information is not identical to genes or to DNA (any more than the words on this page are identical to the printers ink visible to the eye of the reader). Information, whether biological or cultural, is not a part of the world of substance." Hoffmeyer and Emmeche, 2005

"For prescription to be realized, the destination of any message must have knowledge of the source's alphabet, rules and cipher. The destination must also possess the ability to use the cipher. ... But when it comes to life's syntax, semantics and pragmatics, we fanatically insist for metaphysical reasons that the system is purely physical. No empirical, rational, or prediction-fulfillment support exists for this dogma." David Abel, Semiotica, Jan 2009.

The optimization of the genetic code

The Genetic Code is Highly Optimized

This illustration is constructed from information in Rana's "The Cell's Design", Ch 9. Drawing from the peer-reviewed research literature Rana outlines the results of optimization studies of the genetic code.

Comparison to randomly generated codes Better than all but 0.02%, or 1 in 5000

But this analysis understates the uniqueness of the genetic code that is characteristic of essentially all of life because it fails to take into account the chemical nature of the bases A C G T that make up the code. Some mutations, like A-to-G, occur more often than others. When this is factored in:

Factoring in mutation rates of bases Better than all but 1 in 1,000,000

But it is even more dramatic than this when you include the researchers estimate that there are about 10¹⁸ codes with the type of redundancy of the genetic code, and that the existing code is better than nearly all of them.

Comparing codes with comparable redundancy Better than all but a few, if any, of 10¹⁸

The optimization and stability of the genetic is providential, because changes in the code would be disastrous. Rana cites nobel laureate Francis Crick from 1968:

"Crick argued that the genetic code could not undergo significant evolution. His rationale is easy to understand. Any change in codon assignments would lead to changes in amino acids in every polypeptide made by the cell. ... Nearly any conceivable change to the genetic code would be lethal to the cell."

The One-Way Code