Evolution: as immaterial information (Introduction)

by dhw, Friday, June 10, 2022, 10:23 (896 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: I don't know why you introduced the term “translate” here and above. Translates what into what? Intelligence interprets and uses information. Do you or do you not agree? And the article is not about designer theory! It is about “Evolution; as immaterial information”, and I have explained why I find it confusing. It is clear from your various statements about life that you have not cottoned onto the authors’ definition of life, which turns your statements into nonsense, as bolded above.

DAVID: I dumped all the discusson about the article. My intent in presenting it is/was to try and unscramble your brain's view of 'information' as a concept.

There is no point in presenting an article which is so confusing that it even makes nonsense of your own statements about life and information. The fact that you have had to dump it shows that it had the opposite effect from that which you intended.

DAVID: We both know DNA is coded information. That code MUST be translated into active processes for life to appear. The translation method must exist and be provided for cells to use for life to appear. All the different layers of the genome are active and add contributikon to this process of translation and activation of living processes. None of this is disputable. For life to have started all of this had to be present and working. Design theory simply states the designer provided it.

This doesn’t make sense. How can all the different layers of the material genome be active in the “process of translation and activation of living processes” BEFORE life appears???

DAVID: So, once again, we see that immaterial information runs life.

No we don’t. Firstly, the genome cannot be “active” until the materials are already alive. (Dead people still have their DNA.) Secondly, what information are you talking about? The environment provides masses of information that has to be processed by what? Do you have immaterial information processing immaterial information?

DAVID: And as life propagates, the information it carries propagates as life propagates. So the use of the word 'propagates' applies.

The article, which you thought would unscramble my brain, defines life as "information that propagates". And so you are telling me that as information that propagates propagates, the information it carries propagates as information that propagates propagates. And this is supposed to unscramble my brain. But perhaps you have a different definition of life? Please let us have it.

DAVID: The information is instructional since it creates living processes the cells produce.

Information creates living processes which the cells produce? But the cells are material, and apparently they don’t come to life until information produces life, so now we have information producing life (= information that propagates) which is produced by materials which aren’t alive until information gives them life (= information that propagates). And this will unscramble my brain.

DAVID: Design theory recognizes, as you do, that all of this, from the outside of the cell, looks like intelligent activity, and concludes an intelligetn designer produced it. The flip side is chance appearance of this arrangement is reasonably impossible.

At last we have a clear statement, replacing all the gibberish about information with the fact that the activities of cells suggest that they are intelligent. Yes, it takes intelligence to perceive, process and use information. This may or may not have been designed by the supreme (but sourceless) intelligence we call God.