Evolution: as immaterial information (Introduction)

by David Turell , Sunday, June 05, 2022, 15:39 (900 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: You have completely missed the point. I am attacking the vagueness of the article, and you are providing your own theory (which I already mentioned – now in bold) to make up for the muddle. Once more: If information doesn’t exist until it has a material form, how can it create life by “propagating”? The word means reproduce or spread, so information that reproduces and spreads itself is life, although it doesn’t exist until it has a material form. Why not cells or even materials that reproduce and spread themselves are life?

You are fussing about their terminology. Their point is the only way life can work is that it must interpret the information that guides its processes. They are presenting it as it supportd the theory yhou commment on below from ID.

dhw: The authors don’t explain anything. At least ID, like yourself, offers us a clear theory: living forms are so complex that they cannot be the product of chance, and therefore must be the product of an intelligent designer. You don’t even need to mess about with "information" and “propagating”. The terms need defining, and I cannot see how they explain the source of life or the mechanisms of evolution.

DAVID: I fully and logically recognize the need for a controlling operative mind, which you refuse to understand as you revert to natural chance as the driving mechnaism. Pure plea from Darwinism. No wonder you are muddled. God does it and doesn't tell us how, so we research to reach as much understanding as we can.

dhw: Nowhere have I reverted to “natural chance”, and nowhere do the authors mention chance or design or God. I have not offered any theory at all. I have simply criticized the article because I find it muddling.

I think you find it muddling becasue you and I don't have the same background in information theory as prtesented by ID