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

by dhw, Saturday, January 25, 2020, 11:05 (1545 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: We are almost at a point of general agreement, except that for the life of me I don’t know why you have to link instructions to information, because it is this attempt to bring the whole universe under the umbrella of the in-word “information” that causes all the “back and forth” confusion. [1]Why don’t you just call instructions “instructions”? Like virtually every form of reality you can think of, instructions CONTAIN information. Why do you need to wave the “information” flag, when in this particular context, all you are saying is that DNA is too complex not to have been designed? The absurdity of the above quote, and the absurdity of the heading of this thread are totally unnecessary. Once you drop the attempt to create this vast umbrella, everything is clear: DNA is too complex not to have been designed. And in your philosophy, the source of life is not information but is an intelligent mind you call God, who did the designing.[/b]

DAVID: The first bold above is your problem. The issue of the importance of 'information' was introduced to make just the point you express, quite rightly in the second bold. You are bright and clear thinking, but many folks are not, and the issue of information has to be pounded home to make the point you make about the approach: it requires a mind.

No, information does NOT “require” a mind, and the pounding home concerns the complexity of DNA, quite independently of what sort of information requires a mind and what doesn’t! That is how your author has tried to mislead us. Some information is created by minds, and some is not. But even when it has been created by minds, it does not itself create anything. It is simply there, regardless of whether there are minds or not. It requires a mind to analyse it, process it and use it, but as you said yourself, it is “inert”.

DAVID: Part of the battle for the ID folks against the Darwinians is at the level of a political propaganda campaign. In that level of discussion their introduction of information and reference of Shannon information is entirely correct. I assume you opened up this website to entertain all approaches to the battle for review by you and others who might tune in. This is simply one of the argumentative points of view, but in your clear-thinking mind it is not necessary.

Not only is it not necessary, but it leads to confused thinking as exemplified by the absurd generalizations and statements such as those I dealt with earlier (including “information as the source of life”).