Preliminary Remarks about the Concept of Information (discovering life's instruction manual)

AiG ^ | February 26, 2009 | Dr. Werner Gitt

[GodGunsGuts]

If biological organism were designed by the creator to adapt to various environmental condition, that is not evolution. Moreover, virtually all beneficial mutations are loss-of-function (and therefore loss of functional information) mutations, which is perfectly consistent with biblical creation and the fall.

[Wacka]

Denial is not just a river in Egypt.

[oldmanreedy]

"Maybe you should take a basic course in biology. ALL biological organisms are extremely complex. If you knew anything about the life sciences you would at least know this. Functional information God magic is no longer limited by stupid Evo beads on a string reductionism."

hahaha, more God magic. That's never gonna get old. That God magic has really got us Evos on the ropes!

You know, I did take some bio classes in college, but I must have been asleep during the day they discussed how all biological organisms are extremely complex. Dear brother in Christ, forgive my sloth and explain: what exactly does extremely complex mean again? And how is 'extremely complex' different from 'just sorta complex'? Is complexity measured in units, like complexons or something? What if you are a super-duper genius so it isn't that complex to you?

But we've gotten far from my original point. For your convenience, and the pleasure of our viewing audience, I've produced a recap of our conversation:

GodsGunsGuts said:

Albino penguins are a devolution of normal penguins since albino penguins have less information than normal penguins.

Old Man Reedy said:

That doesn't make any sense. What is the precise definition of 'information' you are using? Can you demonstrate rigorously using this definition that albino penguins have less 'information' than normal ones?

GGG said:

Albino penguins are a devolution because albinism results from a gene-disabling mutation, which causes a loss of functional information.

Old Man:

That doesn't answer my question at all! All you've done is minted the meaningless term 'functional information'. Can you give a precise definition of 'functional information'?

GGG:

Functional information is...something...that produces and regulates extremely complex biological organisms.

Old Man:

What? This isn't a definition; you've just decided functional information is some mystery force with a couple of ill-defined attributes. What does it even mean to say something 'produces' and 'regulates' biological organisms? What makes an organism 'extremely complex'?

GGG:

Functional information will allow us to crush the infidel Evos. I don't really know what it means to 'produce' or 'regulate' a biological organism, but people are totally working on that. All biological organisms are extremely complex. Jeez, you must be stupid, all this is usually covered in basic biology courses.

You know what's missing from this entire sequence? A good definition of the concept of 'functional information'. So not only have you failed to establish that albino penguins are some kind of 'devolution' from normal penguins, but you've failed to establish that the terms you were using had any meaning whatsoever.

[oldmanreedy]

Oh, man, excuse the double-post, but I just noticed something GREAT. When you tried to define functional information you said:

"In general, functional information is what produces and regulates extremely complex biological organisms."

But in post 52 you said:

"For instance, if I were to scramble part of this reply, it would cause a decrease in functional information, even though the same number of letters and spaces are available to the reader."

A string of letters in a forum post is not a biological organism GGG!!!! So how does functional information apply to text? What gives? Are you making this stuff up as you go along?