Posted on 05/16/2009 8:13:19 AM PDT by GodGunsGuts
Chapter 12: Life Requires a Source of Information
by Dr. Werner Gitt
May 14, 2009
The common factor present in all living organisms, from bacteria to man, is the information contained in all their cells. It has been discovered that nowhere else can a higher statistical packing density of information (see appendix A1.2.3) be found. The information present in living systems falls in the category of “operational information” as discussed in chapter 7. This information is exactly tuned in to the infinitude of life processes and situations, and its origin can be ascribed to creative constructional information (chapter 7). The different information aspects are depicted in Figure 26...
(Excerpt) Read more at answersingenesis.org ...
Chapter 1: Preliminary Remarks about the Concept of Information
Chapter 2: Principles of Laws of Nature
Chapter 3: Information Is a Fundamental Entity
Chapter 4: The Five Levels of the Information Concept
Chapter 5: Delineation of the Information Concept
Chapter 6: Information in Living Organisms
Chapter 7: The Three Forms in which Information Appears
Chapter 8: Three Kinds of Transmitted Information
Chapter 9: The Quality and Usefulness of Information
Chapter 10: Some Quantitative Evaluations of Semantics
Chapter 11: Questions Often Asked about the Information Concept
(Stay tuned for Chapter 13)
Ping!
You might read this 1988 Atlantic Monthly article about ed fredkin’s view on the universe and information.
http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/88apr/wright.htm
This ‘DNA is information’ topic is fascinating.
Instinct. That’s the simplistic term given to a host of animal behaviors (at least it was when I was growing up). Of course, there are many ‘hard-wired’ involuntary responses that have been built into us. Examples include breathing, balancing, and a host of others.
Even more fascinating to me are the ‘softer skills’ that seem to be hard-coded into animals. These would be species-specific behaviors. Here are some examples I posit:
How a feline behaves. Whether raised in isolation or not, whether domesticated or not, a cat behaves like a cat. There are some personality differences between individuals... but fundamentally the species ‘acts’ pretty much the same. (I won’t bother giving examples - any of you could come up with such a list of traits/behaviors.) This species-specific behavior seems to apply to all animals.
Further, is a cat’s behavior really voluntary? Interesting thought.
Question: How in God’s name did a sequence of DNA base pairs cause a physical structure or recording of that behavior to be imprinted into a cat’s brain?
Bird nest construction. For each species, there is a set pattern (blueprint?) to their construction. Shape, size, materials, and location. The instructions for this are in their brain in some form. Not only is it mind-boggling to consider that this even ‘does’ occur, what is the mechanism to ‘translate’ a DNA sequence to an artifact in the brain that reliably permits the bird to build a nest? How is the DNA sequence ‘read’, ‘translated’, and ‘deposited’ into the brain? The IT part of me believes this strongly implies something like a computer ‘language’ to translate the DNA instruction sequence to a physical brain ‘structure’. Very, complicated. Designed? You bet.
{Note: For those folks who think we’ve figured out DNA, try this - change the DNA code in a a hummingbird to build a robin’s nest. THEN I’ll really be impressed.}
Insects and the A-10 Warthog. When constructed, the A-10 is built ‘around’ it’s huge Gatling gun. I view many insects as having the same design criteria. A good example is the spider and it’s web-producing spinnerets. In it’s tiny little brain, deposited there while growing from a single egg and strand of DNA, are all the instructions necessary to use it’s primary-weapon. And, boy, is it useful.
Scorpions, wasps, mosquitoes, praying mantis, etc...
built around a primary-weapon, including the instruction set somehow implanted in their little brains. How does this instruction manual get there?
[An aside. As we progress to larger-brained animals, there seems to be less of the ‘hardwired’ instructions for doing specific tasks. Insects, as an example, simply ‘know’ how to build useful things for themselves. Why don’t humans have brain-implants from their DNA to let them build useful things? Perhaps a Bow and Arrow, for instance?]
Comments welcomed... cheee
Thanks for the post and the links.
We have to go further than that: Information stands above matter and energy; it came before either of them, and it will still exist when they both have passed.
2Pe 3:10 - "But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up."
Well stated!
I don't know if these complex behaviors are part of the body of information in their DNA, or if they are transmitted individually by their creator, but either way there is no room for a naturalistic explanation of them. And they do also raise the level of complexity far above even the function and structure of eyes and brains, to a mathematically indescribable level.
All excellent points, cheee. Did you happen to catch the other chapters of this fascinating book? Did you happen to catch Ch 1 re: spider spinnerets? I’m assuming that is why you brought them up. It’s almost as our physical bodies (be it animals, insects, etc) are comprised of trillions of sensors that the software in our respective brains has been written to read and act on in different ways (too include all of our exotic rituals!).
Haven’t read them, yet ... but intend to.
It’s not surprising that spiders would come up in this discussion. Imagine what it would take to write the ‘field manual’ for instructing a spider in the care and use of their web-making tool? It would have to be hundreds of pages thick.
But the spider has that instruction manual somehow loaded into it’s minuscule little brain and wields it’s spinnerets expertly from day one. Just amazing.
BTW, I don’t post much on FR but do a lot of reading. I always look forward to your threads. More often than not, I learn something new and useful. I do, however, cringe at much of the vitriol thrown at you. Those anti-God zealots can be really nasty.
What you’re doing to enlighten and educate is appreciated. Thank you for fighting the good fight. Keep it up...
Yes, I assumed in my answer that what defines ‘us’ is what is included in our DNA - no more and no less. As you suggest, this may not be true.
I read somewhere that a distinguished neurosurgeon thinks that our brains are a ‘transmitter’ that allows us to communicate with our true selves (soul, perhaps?).
If true, this could explain lots of things. For instance, why we might act differently after brain damage occurs. A stroke, dementia, or other damage might have simply damaged our ability to receive, and act on, information/instruction.
This might also suggest how our brains might be able to accumulate and retrieve a life-time’s worth of memories. (Off-site storage?). Just imagine the amount of data contained in simultaneous storage of visual, auditory, taste, smell, feel, and emotional information for the millions of events over a lifetime of experiences. It boggles the mind.
To pick something as an example: Let’s say 40 years ago you rode on Disney World’s Space Mountain roller coaster. I submit that the previous ride seems awfully fresh and familiar as you experience the same sensations for a second time. The same magnitude of information storage can and has occurred for other events - most of which can’t be so easily repeated.
So, can one’s life flash before one’s eyes? Sure it could, the data is all there. Viewing it, however, would be both a blessing and a curse.
Just ordered a copy of the book. This one is significantly better than usual.
Scorpions, wasps, mosquitoes, praying mantis, etc... built around a primary-weapon, including the instruction set somehow implanted in their little brains. How does this instruction manual get there?
The comparison of scorpions, etc. to an A-10 Warthog is awesome. Neither has a structure that can be extricated from the information required to build them. The A-10 is generated from assembly-line construction; the scorpion is obviously generated from the assembly-line of God, or there would be no mechanism from which the information requiring the 'firing' of the scorpion stinger to be added to the scorpion.
The evolutionist can't explain this! What do they think - that the stinger appeared from some "benevolent mutation", then the poison just happened to appear from another "benevolent mutation", that the scorpion just suddenly decided to use it from another "benevolent mutation"? Ridiculous.
The hand of the Lord is obviously involved in complexities like this. A-10 Warthogs aren't just spontaneously born by natural means with information already built-in that can somehow "improve"; obviously the same principle applies to the scorpion. Bless our Creator!
Thanks for the insightful post!
I personally think the latter (bolded) option is the correct answer. The ability to build a nest from pure "natural" instinct is simply too complex to be contained within a simple sequence of four proteins in DNA, no matter how large.
It is becoming increasingly obvious with our observations of nature that the direct hand of God cannot be ignored - only secularistic science refuses to directly acknowledge the Creator in their 'scientific' books and papers. Creation scientists are not so handicapped.
"Lift your eyes and look to the heavens: Who created all these? He who brings out the starry host one by one, and calls them each by name. Because of his great power and mighty strength, not one of them is missing." -Isaiah 40:26
The Bible is clear that it is the Lord whose direct intervention keeps the stars aflame - is it no surprise that he intervenes to allow the bird to build its nest?
The universe would fall to pieces without His involvement in keeping "natural" laws from falling apart.
http://www.peabody.yale.edu/exhibits/treeoflife/morph.html
The animation linked above shows how this technique of ancestral character state reconstruction is used to infer the evolution of the shape, size and number of body parts of the arachnids (the branch of the Tree of Life that includes spiders, scorpions, mites and ticks) and their relatives such as the horseshoe crabs. To see how their different body forms evolved, we can trace up the branches from an ancestor at the base to any tip of the tree and watch the evolutionary changes that are reconstructed along the way.
Notice that the ancestor of two descendants seldom looks like either descendant, because change usually happens along both paths. In fact, phylogenetic trees show that it is misguided to say, for example, that “humans evolved from chimps;” rather, both humans and chimpanzees evolved from a common ancestor that differed from both.
The common ancestor of all arachnids probably resembled the now extinct eurypterids or sea scorpions, fearsome aquatic predators that lived some 250 to 500 million years ago.
While arachnids share basic body parts, these have diverged in fascinating ways.
The chelicerae in spiders, for example, are fangs that evolved the ability to inject venom; in pseudoscorpions they evolved to produce silk; and in solpugids they became massive jaws that rip apart prey.
In scorpions, the rear of the abdomen evolved into a poisonous stinger; in spiders, into a silk-producing organ for making webs; and in whip scorpions, a feeler for targeting a cannon that fires nasty chemicals at its enemies.
http://www.peabody.yale.edu/exhibits/treeoflife/branches.html
Thanks for the ping!
Thank you for your kind words. I know the other side will be loathe to hear this, but a little encouragement goes a long way!
All the best—GGG :o)
Compared to an amoeba, a spider’s brain center is quite large. Thus, it clearly has evolved, bit by bit, a web construction manual. It’s stored in the glove compartment! Bob
Why are people comforted by believing that we came from nothing? So they can live without restraints!
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