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

by dhw, Tuesday, March 24, 2020, 14:26 (1706 days ago) @ David Turell

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?

DAVID: 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.

DAVID: 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.

Life doesn’t make cells! Life IS cells, and the question is how inanimate matter comes to life. You say information did it. So is information meant to be another name for your God?

DAVID: 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.

One moment information is passive and non-creative, the next it is active and creative, and we have information using or translating information to produce biological information, which apparently makes information the source of life. If you want impressive evidence for a designing mind, how about the complex biochemistry of all living organisms?

DAVID: 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.

It is the need (frequently not met) to distinguish between multiple forms of information that bothers me, especially when they make a complicated mess out of a simple argument. Meanwhile, as far as I can see from your response, the only thing missing from my summary is bias in favour of theism over atheism.