Evolution: as immaterial information (Introduction)

by David Turell , Friday, June 10, 2022, 16:35 (685 days ago) @ dhw

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.

dhw: 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???

Perfect sense: all the information in a fertilized cell is alive, but must be translated for a living form to appear.

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

dhw: 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.

How obtuse can you be? We only get life from life, as we play with biochemistry. Only what is living can produce more of what is alive. All supported by the ability to translate information it contains. Life appeared and has never stopped producing more life.

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.

dhw: 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.

If not from God, how did the information appear, since it is immaterial to start with and MUST come from an active mind.