Posted on 10/15/2009 8:15:58 PM PDT by GodGunsGuts
When intelligent design (ID) proponents press neo-Darwinian evolutionists on the inability of Darwinian evolution to produce new functional genetic information, a common response from evolutionists is that they get angry and engage in name calling. That’s what happened when...
(Excerpt) Read more at evolutionnews.org ...
To clarify, I agree that it is relevant 'to the discussion of biological systems'. It is just not helpful to explaining the origin of genomic information (that is, information that exists within the context of an independently existing linguistic code.) That's not to say there aren't interested aspects of gene info transmission upon which Shannon's work has bearing. Meyer's article, like my comments, was focused on the question of mechanisms for the origin of genetic information.
==Both Jonathan Wells and Stephen Meyer evidently believe that Shannon Information Theory (not to mention Kolmogorov information complexity) is a theory of functional biological information.
The more I read about the subject, the more I have come to realize that it is the evos who want to limit the study of biological information to Shannon-type information. But as Wells, Meyer, Williams, Gitt and many others point out, if Shannon information cannot tell the difference between mere statistical complexity and CSI, then it is not up to the task...which does not take away from what Shannon information was designed to describe and explain in the least IMHO.
All the best—GGG
Thats not crude at all.. but maybe its axiomatic..
I wish I had time to go into this in more detail, but I must “post and run” and so will copy here my reply to GodGunGuts' question from a previous thread. He asked:
Again, complex systems theory - which is the domain of these ID/creationist arguments - has to do with the message itself, not the communication of it (Shannon, information.)
Shannon's model is mathematics. The title reads Mathematical Theory of Communications.
Complex systems theory is inter-disciplinary.
The letter in your mailbox is of no effect until you read it and your uncertainty is reduced - you become "informed."
Major clue: DNA survives death. It is a message much like the letter in the mail box. In the dead person, the DNA message is no longer being transmitted.
Information (Shannon, successful communication) is the reduction of uncertainty in the receiver (or molecular machine) as it goes from a before state to an after state.
It is the action, not the message.
More importantly, Scriptures illuminate the relevance of communication. God's word becomes active or actualized once communicated (emphasis mine:)
For he spake, and it was [done]; he commanded, and it stood fast. – Psalms 33:9
The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night sheweth knowledge. [There is] no speech nor language, [where] their voice is not heard. – Psalms 19:1-3
My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me: - John 10:27
So then faith [cometh] by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. - Romans 10:17
And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl [that] may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven. - Genesis 1:20
It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, [they] are spirit, and [they] are life. - John 6:63
Jesus' Name is Word of God.
The verse from Scripture:
That is to say, life in itself – biologically living things. (I strongly recommend Rosen’s book Life Itself to see how first and final cause are entailed in biological life.)
The link between water which is non-life and living things which are characterized by their autonomously communicating a message, DNA (Shannon, information) is the hydrogen bond.
The hydrogen bond is what gives the DNA its geometry, the double helix, and binds the message the living thing communicates within itself, ergo be alive in itself ("hath life.") (For more, I strongly recommend reading Myers’ thoughts on the geometry of biological information content.)
Every thing which is biologically (physically) alive is autonomously communicating a message that constitutes what it is – a particular daffodil, a particular dog, a particular human.
There is no biological life without the communication of that message. That is why the Urey/Miller experiments could get no further than amino acids, their experiments were blind to information theory (communication, Shannon.) And that is why Wimmer succeeded in creating the polio virus in the laboratory. Wimmer started with the message itself, e.g. polio RNA off the internet which he structured geometrically by synthesizing it and then upon introducing the message to cell-free juice, the virus replicated itself, i.e. transmitted the message.
Complexity issues – particularly William’s inversely causal meta-information – are extremely persuasive in the crevo debates.
But the poison pill to abiogenesis in my view is the communication itself, Shannon’s mathematical theory of communication.
In other words, there is no naturalistic explanation for how or why communications would arise spontaneously in a physico-chemical environment.
Our new Spiritual life is also a communication directly from God. We are biologically and spiritually a message being communicated.
In biological life, that communication is autonomous. In Spiritual life, that communication is not autonomous.
My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me: - John 10:27
Why do ye not understand my speech? [even] because ye cannot hear my word. – John 8:43
Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me. I am the vine, ye [are] the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing. - John 15:4-5
But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his. - Romans 8:9
For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. - Colossians 3:3
I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me. - Galatians 2:20
What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost [which is] in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? - I Corinthians 6:19
Well said...
Well, whatta surprise! /sarc.
That only tells me that evos don't understand Shannon any better than Wells and Meyers do!
In short, Shannon Information theory is NOT a theory of functional biological information at all.
But then many evos are disturbed about the very idea of biological function in the first place. For the idea of "function" involves a kind of (seeming) "causal pull from the future" (as we see with Alex Williams' very interesting model of inversely-causal metainformation) — a/k/a a "final cause" — which is the sort of thing that the Newtonian model of physico-mechanics forbids.
Newtonian causation proceeds only from past to present, in irreversible serial time. The future (when we get there) is merely the sum total of past events. There is no idea that past events conduce towards a pre-existing, specified goal (i.e., biological function), that there can be any "guide to the system"; for evos, random mutation + natural selection in serial time explains everything biological. Adherents of the Newtonian paradigm will only concede that something may well "look like" a function; but that in fact if we think we see a "function," what we are really seeing is just an illusion.
Moreover, the evos evidently understand that, at some level, the idea of a specified biological function is inimicable to a theory based on "random mutation + natural selection." They want to find that increases in biological complexity result from a "blind," material process. One gathers they may be quite at a loss to integrate the idea of biological information — which is not physical or mechanical — into the Darwinian model. And so one imagines a tendency to denigrate it, or perhaps even to misrepresent what biological information is.
Whatever the case, biological information isn't described by Shannon Information Theory. Maybe this is why evos like Shannon theory. In the information hierarchy, it is very "low order," and applies to physico-mechanical systems as well as to biological ones. :^)
[[It is just not helpful to explaining the origin of genomic information]]
It was never meant to- Betty Boop and AlamoGirl’s posts will clear this up
[[Meyer’s article, like my comments, was focused on the question of mechanisms for the origin of genetic information.]]
for that, the mechanisms for origin of informaiton- William’s articles on ‘life’s irreducible structures’ is excellent- GGG will have a link to htose articles- Basically, dirty chemicals are simply not capable of evolving the4 complex info needed to sustain life- Complex info and metainfo needs to be present first, and the only way it can be is via an intelligent designer
[[Thats not crude at all.. but maybe its axiomatic]]
Not only thqat, but aromatic
Thank you for your wonderful essay-post, dearest sister in Christ!
Excellent reply, BB! I like your casaul pull from the future...aka forward planning. To this day, in all my reading, the evos have never come up with a satisfactory answer for that...no will they ever IMHO. Unless you consider trillions of mindless pre-adaption miracles as a satisfactory answer, Creationists and IDers have the best explanation for inversely causal meta-information by far.
LOLOL GGG! But you know, evos evidently don't object to "miracles" in principle, only those which come from God.
Thanks for your kind words, GGG!
After my last to you, I had a further thought (will wonders never cease!). It was this:
Unquestionably, Darwin's evolution theory is squarely within the Newtonian paradigm. That paradigm has itself had to be modified, in light of relativity theory and quantum theory. But evolution theory hasn't changed much in substance since the middle of the 19th century.
The mathematical physicist/theoretical biologist Robert Rosen has argued (convincingly to my mind) that no advances can be made in theoretical biology on Newton's paradigm. Newton's paradigm — for all its excellence in the physico-chemical world — simply is not up to the job of explicating the phenomena of biology. Within our ordinarily perceived 4D world (that is, where relativistic and quantum effects are marginal), Newton's paradigm is still unexcelled when it comes to mechanical ("simple") systems in nature. But it hits the wall on questions pertaining to biological ("complex") systems.
The reason for this, according to Rosen, is that, among other things, the presuppositions of the Newtonian system with respect to causation — past to present, future just the sum total of past events, no final causes — is simply "too impoverished" to account for the organizational complexity of living systems. That's where information comes into the picture — for which there is at present no known natural source, no matter how hard Darwinists twist themselves to show "information" as the spontaneous product of the random burping of dumb matter. (Talk about miracles!)
In other words, the Newtonian paradigm admits only formal, material, and efficient causes: Evidently in honor of Francis Bacon, final causes are strictly banned!
But it is the final cause — what Alex Williams has illustrated with his very interesting model of inversely-causal metainformation — that alone can account for biological organization, which is all about the functions the organization is geared toward instantiating and coordinating in living systems. (I could have said "designed" instead of "geared," but why be controversial? LOL!!!)
I have spoken of final cause as a kind of "pull from the future." Another way to put it — and Rosen makes this very clear with his relational diagrams (which explore the causal organizational structure of complex, that is living systems) — a final cause is a supervening cause, in that it correlates and duly integrates in time the other three Aristotelian causes. It "closes the causal loop" — and you can't get to the idea of biological function if you can't do that.
I love the two Rosen books I've read so far — Life Itself and Essays on Life Itself. He's not proposing a detailed theory, as Williams has done. Rather, he is getting down to the most basic questions that modern science needs to ask/consider, if they want to get anywhere with a theoretical biology that actually looks at biological systems themselves, not just how they speciate once they're here. If you ever need fresh ammo to go after evos, you'd not find better source material anywhere....
JMHO, FWIW.
When copy/pasting a bunch of paragraphs from other creationist sites, it’s usually best to cite them.
i did- further up
woops- no i didn’t- I copied it from another thread I had posted in- forgot thel ink- You’ll find the link in the other thread
Thank you so very much for your wonderful insights, dearest sister in Christ!
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