Evolution: as immaterial information (Introduction)

by David Turell , Saturday, June 11, 2022, 15:46 (894 days ago) @ dhw

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

dhw: Why have you jumped to a “fertilized” cell? Of course it’s alive. It’s been produced by living organisms! You might just as well tell me that life produces life (as in fact you do later!). Is there anyone who doesn’t know that? The mystery – as I have bolded in your statement above – is HOW LIFE STARTED!

All of the processes in living cells we can see make life appear in cellular material. It is emergent. As you know I believe God started life.

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.

DAVID: 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.

dhw: Agreed. And that is the great mystery. HOW did life first appear? What is it that gives life to materials? Nobody knows. We don’t need to “define” life, though the authors tell us that defining life is the key, and their definition is “information that propagates”. Life is the state of being alive. And what you have written here is the only thing we know. Life comes from life. We don’t need any of these convoluted discussions of information that propagates (life propagates) or has to be “translated” (what has the ability to translate what?).

Yes we do. Life runs by translating informational instructions it contains.

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.

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

dhw: Why do you need to bring in “information”? Nobody knows what brings materials to life. So why don’t you just ask: how did life appear? Clearly the complexities of the cell, which is the basis of all life, are such that they alone support the case for design. The unsolved mystery of what makes them live is NOT solved by all the blather about “information”! Hence these confusing and totally unproductive discussions – unless you really think “life comes from life” is too difficult for anyone to understand.

The fact that life runs on immaterial information and operational information can only come from mental activity producing the informational concepts, a designer exists.