Evolution: as immaterial information (Introduction)

by David Turell , Friday, June 03, 2022, 16:31 (905 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: You say I don’t understand the point, because “most physical forms contain oodles of repetitive info, not much meaning as in DNA”. How does this contradict my own comment? If you really want to help me, then please answer the question that preceded it: how does immaterial information create (let alone diversify) life by “propagating”, if it doesn’t exist until the material form already exists?

DAVID: You have described the problem if evolution is viewed as a natural event. Which came first chicken or egg??? The answer is both must arrive together!!! The 'RNA first' theory makes the absurd approach that RNA is made naturally and suddenly the code has meaning!! That is why I follow the ID theorists. You are floundering because that means a mental agent did the creating. For me, all the deductive reasoning I use goes back to Sherlock, so if all else is impossible, the imporbable must exist. Like it or not, life runs on the information in the DNA of the genome and its other layers. The code contains the needed information which only living organisms can interpret.

dhw: I am not floundering. Your response confirms most of the objections I raised in my original comments. Of course life depends on the workings of DNA, and of course only living organisms can “interpret” DNA. But you still have your DNA when you are dead, and no amount of blather about “information” can tell us what makes bodies live, or what makes bodies capable of evolving into different bodies. You can and do follow ID theorists without even mentioning the word “information”. The question I asked you typifies what to me is the sheer muddle that emerges from an article about "information" that is supposed to be explanatory. Once you yourself even provided us with a thread entitled “Information as the source of life”! Whereas what you really mean is that your God is the source of life. You might as well rename your God “Information” if the concept is so central to your thinking.

To clarify my belief: the information that makes life emerge through functional blichemistry comes from a designing mind, given the name God in Western religions.

Transferred from “More miscellany”:

dhw: As a matter of interest, do all your information theorists believe in your God as the provider of all information?

DAVID: All ID folks who use information theory do believe in a designer.

dhw: All ID folks believe in a designer. I asked you if all information theorists believe in a designer!

I don't know.