Evolution: as immaterial information (Introduction)

by dhw, Sunday, June 12, 2022, 10:33 (894 days ago) @ David Turell

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!

DAVID: 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.

The processes can’t even begin until the cells are alive! All parts of the cell are still present in a dead person. “God started life” is no more enlightening than “chance started life”, but at least in both cases we have now rid ourselves of “information” as the source of life.

DAVID: 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: […] 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?).

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

So “information that propagates” runs by translating information that it contains. (Nothing to do with how life started, but we should abandon that question.) So into what does the information that propagates translate the information it contains? What sort of information is “propagating” information anyway? Once upon a time, I thought information was purely passive, and needed a mind to interpret and use it. But not now apparently: it can translate and reproduce itself and spread itself around.

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

Now we have propagating information, instructional information, operational information and informational concepts, and life runs on mental activity which proves that God exists. And all this is meant to “unscramble” my brain. I suggest the following: Life runs on mental activity perceiving, interpreting and using information. Life comes from life, and nobody knows how life and mental activity started.