Evolution: as immaterial information (Introduction)

by dhw, Saturday, June 04, 2022, 08:10 (902 days ago) @ David Turell

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.

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

You didn’t need to clarify that. What needs clarifying is the muddle created by this article and others, which arises from placing “information” (undefined and undifferentiated) at the heart of still unsolved mysteries such as the origin of life and the means whereby organisms can change their structure in order to adapt and innovate, and so create new organs and new species. Among other questions, I asked: “How does immaterial information create (let alone diversify) life by “propagating” if it doesn’t exist until the material form already exists?” The authors offer no explanation. They simply conclude: “information that propagates is life”. Can you follow this argument? As far as you are concerned, your God creates the material form and somehow makes it live. Nobody knows how. The information contained in DNA is still present when the material form is dead. Similarly, nobody knows how bodies change into new bodies. But apparently it’s all done by information “propagating”. If you understand this, please tell me what it means. If you can’t, then please stop defending arguments you don’t understand.

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!

DAVID: I don't know.

Then there is no point in assuming that information theory favours theism.