Paul Davies: new comments on Information and life (Introduction)

by David Turell , Monday, March 23, 2020, 20:10 (1707 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: There are three factors in the debate: 1) passive, non-creative information; 2) the intelligence that uses it, either autonomously (cellular) or automatically (your God’s instructions); 3) the source of that intelligence (atheistic chance or your God). What do you think your different uses of the term “information” add to this?
And
dhw: Wouldn’t you say the complexity of living organisms makes for clearer evidence that a designing mind exists? Now please tell me what is missing from the list of three factors I have compiled above.

DAVID: I see you recognize the varying aspects of the information life contains, no matter how they are given descriptive terms. For life to emerge as life, many millions of amino acid molecules make huge protein molecules which run coordinated reactions, so all the reactions work in concert with each other. The largest molecules of all are the enzymes, many many, many thousand amino acids put together with areas that hold two different molecules in close proximity to force them to react making a new protein product. Without the enzymes a reaction could take thousands of years, instead of milliseconds. All of this, the manufacture of the proteins, the reactions themselves and the coordination of all reactions is the result of instructions. Only a designing mind can provide this.

dhw: Your conclusion shows that you have totally lost sight of the subject, which is the confusion created by your use of the word “information”, in which we have passive or descriptive information, instructional or operative information, information which translates the instructional information into something or the other which ends up as biological information. I can only repeat the request I made above, since you have forgotten what we are arguing about:

dhw: Wouldn’t you say the complexity of living organisms makes for clearer evidence that a designing mind exists? Now please tell me what is missing from the list of three factors I have compiled above.

Your three items are correct as far as they go. Life makes cells from information it contains, and it has translating information that allows it to do that manufacturing. Your question: "What do you think your different uses of the term “information” add to this?" it creates much more impressive evidence a mind had to design all of this. This is a point of view ID presses all the time. For some reason pointing out the need for underlying information bothers you. Why? It doesn't complicate the discussion. It is just another way of looking at the complexity.