Information as the source of life; not by chance (Introduction)

by dhw, Saturday, January 11, 2020, 11:56 (1566 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: You have ignored the rest of that section of the post, and so I assume that you now accept my original statement (“There is nothing backward in the argument that random processes do produce information, information is non-active, random processes do not produce instructions, and instructions can only be produced by intelligent use of information") as well as my criticisms of your own, one part of which even had life existing before it emerged.

DAVID: Random processes can only produce descriptive information which an observing mind will describe.

So you clearly agree that there is nothing backward in my statement. Thank you. And I think you also agree that we can finally dismiss the heading of this thread: information is not the source of life.

I have brought the following exchange over from “biological complexity” and substituted it for the discussion on this thread concerning the same subject, as follows:

dhw: I totally accept the logic of your design argument, but I find your concept of non-finite, eternally conscious energy just as incredible as that of unconscious, infinite and eternal energy coming up with the goods. Once again, I would say that belief in either requires a leap of faith.

DAVID: I would repeat , logic requires a planing mind, which God has. How does your unconscious energy think? Since something cannot come from nothing, something has always existed. You do not address all the evidence, which most be considered.

Yes, something has always existed. Your question is wrongly phrased. We can agree that energy has always existed. The question therefore is: how does energy think? Your glib answer is presumably that energy is conscious and therefore it thinks. So how does energy become conscious? Presumably you will answer that it doesn’t become conscious, it just is. And yet the only consciousness we know is that of material beings. And so an equivalent hypothesis is that energy produces materials and by a great big stroke of luck in the course of an eternity/infinity of material combinations, some materials combined to create consciousness. And once that material combination had formed, the rest is the history of life. No, I DON’T BELIEVE IT. Nor do I believe that energy just IS conscious. But I find it feasible that once consciousness existed, it was able to manipulate its own materials. Just a theory which is open to theistic or atheistic interpretation. (See also the Shapiro thread.)

DAVID: Why bother to invent a theory which for you is not believable? But God is more credible since you accept obvious design exists! So you invent a fairy tale with no evidentiary substance.

I did not invent the chance theory that underlies all atheism, any more than you invented the planning theory that underlies all theism! Why bother? Because it is innate in human nature to look for explanations. Why do you think I bothered to set up this website?

dhw: And why do you constantly ignore my emphasis on the fact that I cannot believe EITHER hypothesis, which is why I remain agnostic!

DAVID: I don't ignore your agnosticism which is quite apparent in the title of your website. I am using it to proselytize, as you have graciously allowed, against it and atheism.

I am delighted that you use it to proselytize your own “fairy tale with no evidentiary substance”, and in the past we have discussed various other such fairy tales. Since none of them have been or can be proven, we apply our human reason to them to test their credibility. You’re all in favour of that when it comes to the concept of design, but you’re dead against it when we try to explain the history of life according to “David’s theory of evolution”!