Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

4. Therefore, if information is as described in information theory, it refutes the part about "That Mind is God". Sorry, I really didn't mean to do that. But there it is. Maybe the idea survives if you revise what you are thinking about regarding information.
5. But next, I think that even with an everyday understanding of information (semantics), we see it consumed to powerful effect without the presence of a mind. DNA is transcribed by transcription RNA to encode messenger RNA to encode proteins that do useful things. None of this requires a mind to operate. A crystal builds copies of itself by simple inorganic processes. Now you may believe that this took a creator, but you can't conclude that merely from seeing that a nonthinking process consumed information. And if that is tough, it is clear that nature produces information continuously. Wind blowing across the sand encodes ripples. Waves and the tide are the encoding of the moon's gravitational pull on the earth. And so on and so on.

This is a crucial distinction. You are confusing patterns and code.

Patterns (snowflakes, crystals, hurricanes, tornados, rivers, coastlines) occur in nature.

A code is “A system of signals used to represent letters or numbers in transmitting messages.” Examples of code include computer languages, English, Chinese, music, the base ten numbers system, and radio signals. Codes always involve a system of symbols that represent ideas or plans.

All codes contain patterns, but not all patterns contain codes. Naturally occurring patterns do not contain code.

Do you see the distinction?

Really? If a pattern matches a complex mathematical equation, how can it not be a code? If the pattern is used to develop other patterns how can it not be a code?

Fractal patterns exist in nature, they meet both tests.

“Coded information” is defined as a system of symbols used by an encoding and decoding mechanism, which transmits a message that is independent of the communication medium.

For a complete discussion of naturally occurring patterns, and how they differ from codes:

http://www.cosmicfingerprints.com/dna-atheists/alleged-examples-naturally-occurring-code/

Anonymous wrote:The cosmic fingerprints guy is a crackpot. I can't get past his page on information theory because he cites Shannon and yet he totally contradicts Shannon. This is not a matter of interpretation. He fundamentally misrepresents information theory. Given that, I don't even see why I would read the rest of his site. His argument has already failed.

Shannon may have begun information theory, but it is still just a theory, his theory. He is not the only information theorist. Why not expand your horizons and explore recent developments? I recall the video rationalist saying that rationalists love to constantly refine their understanding of reality.

I have no personal affinity for Marshall. But I do find it interesting that you deem him a crackpot. Is he a crackpot because he believes in a Designer?

Given that the poster you link to never bothers to link to the actual conversation it can be assumed he has no interest in intellectual honesty. I did come across this complete and total evisceration of his argument, though:

http://www.atheistpropaganda.com/2008/08/atheists-riddle-oh-no-im-so-scared.html

OP, I'm still waiting for you to answer my two riddles, which have more support than your fallacious DNA guy.

PP, I read the links you provided, and it is clear you did not look at the link I provided. "Atheist propaganda's" points were answered in the summary of the objections and responses to objections. Since the syllogism is not mine, and has been fiercely debated for years by much greater minds, I still must gently suggest that any interested parties look at the debate. You can slog through the entire original discussion on the Infidels site, or you can read the summary, which consolidates repetitive objections and streamlines the back and forth.

Of course, this is not the equivalent of putting God under a microscope so you can see Him waving at you. But any open-minded intellectual should find the discussion fascinating.

Anonymous wrote:OP, you seemed genuinely curious at the onset of this thread. Now, it seems like your trying to convince (proselytize?) us.

Some of us are alright with no having a supernatural being to look after us. I don't need to seek out Aristotle or Shakespeare to tell me what to think. I don't need a holy text to tell me right from wrong. I don't need an afterlife to feel hope or happiness. And, I don't need pity for my soul with clogged arteries, or whatever you were trying to say with your analogy a few pages back.

I'm fine with you or anyone else holding religious beliefs that work for you. It doesn't offend or challenge my atheism for others to believe.

Your obsession with the beginning the end of life kind of takes away from all that is here right now. Right now you should be concerned with improving justice and life.

OP here, good evening!

My curiosity continues unabated. As I have said repeatedly, I appreciate and enjoy PPs points, and know that no one's faith in God ever came from an argument. The greatest human minds who have ever lived have wrestled with these questions, and I do not belong in their ranks. Our conversation has veered from personal stories to philosophy to epistemology to theology to biology to physics to genetics to ethics to logic to other disciplines I can't remember right now to snarkiness and back again. I am an expert in none of these areas. I have learned so much. Thank you.

I have been completely honest in all of my posts, about my personal story, my personal faith, and my limitations. I certainly haven't tried to pitch my story, and I am sure it instigated lots of eye-rolling. That's fine. It's just my story.

There is one thing I would like to respond to: the conclusion that having only this material life to live means you infuse it with more meaning than if you have an eternal life to live, as well. Just think about that for a sec. You are able to contemplate the meaning of your life because you are here, around DC. You were not a female baby born to an impoverished family in India who let you slowly starve to death. You are not a political dissident in China who was shot in the back of the head. You are not one of the billions and billions and billions of humans who have lived thwarted, oppressed, enslaved, tormented lives. I am truly glad that you see your life as a gift, and that you are able to live it exercising your free will. Most of humanity has not been so gifted.

If death is your release from life, you only have death to worry about. If death is the beginning of your eternal life, whose character will be determined by the way you lived your material life, your material life becomes eternally important.

Either man is material, and death is the end, or man is material and immaterial, and death is the step into an eternal life.

You could well be right. Man could be strictly material. There could be no supernatural reality. You could be the author of right and wrong. When you die, you cease to be.

The day will come when you are dead, and I am dead, and if you are right, neither of us will be around to know.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Information is transferred between two particles that are in a state of quantum entanglement. This is instantaneous information exchange not mediated by a force. It can occur at any distance.

Quantum mechanics really does challenge whether out ability to reason through analogies to real life experience is useful at all, doesn't it?

Yes, this one even stumped Einstein.

It is ironic that information theory is a critical component of cosmology, and yet somehow it is being used as a defense of theism. The problem is that lay people cannot readily conceive of information beyond what is commonplace.

At the same time, it is also ironic that the genetic code is being used by theists to prove an intelligent creator. There are plenty of experiments in which the RNA process steps have been generated out of real world conditions, applying no specific intelligence. The question is not whether it can be done, but how it was specifically done in our case (life on earth) and what the probability is given earth-like conditions. But when the papers are posted, none of the theists know how to read them so they ignore them.

Well, also that there is no incentive whatsoever for them to do so. I can say as a non-theist, if there were a compelling paper written tomorrow that gave evidence of the God hypothesis, I'd be excited as hell. Obviously, that's not the case for a believer--they're only concerned for evidence that supports their existing beliefs.

"Epistemic closure" in its purest form.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Information is transferred between two particles that are in a state of quantum entanglement. This is instantaneous information exchange not mediated by a force. It can occur at any distance.

Quantum mechanics really does challenge whether out ability to reason through analogies to real life experience is useful at all, doesn't it?

Yes, this one even stumped Einstein.

It is ironic that information theory is a critical component of cosmology, and yet somehow it is being used as a defense of theism. The problem is that lay people cannot readily conceive of information beyond what is commonplace.

At the same time, it is also ironic that the genetic code is being used by theists to prove an intelligent creator. There are plenty of experiments in which the RNA process steps have been generated out of real world conditions, applying no specific intelligence. The question is not whether it can be done, but how it was specifically done in our case (life on earth) and what the probability is given earth-like conditions. But when the papers are posted, none of the theists know how to read them so they ignore them.

Anonymous wrote:Information is transferred between two particles that are in a state of quantum entanglement. This is instantaneous information exchange not mediated by a force. It can occur at any distance.

Quantum mechanics really does challenge whether out ability to reason through analogies to real life experience is useful at all, doesn't it?

Information is transferred between two particles that are in a state of quantum entanglement. This is instantaneous information exchange not mediated by a force. It can occur at any distance.

Black holes destroy, copy, and radiate back information.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Let's accept for the sake of argument only that
1) dna is a code
and
2) all codes we know of require a mind

To get to God, you still need to prove that because we are only thus far aware of codes that come from a mind that there aren't any codes that don't come from a mind.

In other words, (2) isn't really true because we know of DNA and, if it is a code, we don't know if it comes from a mind or not. So in order to say it must come from a mind we have to assume that which you are trying to prove, i.e., that ALL codes come from a mind.

Exactly. It's possible that DNA (and RNA) are the two examples. But saying "You can't use DNA as an example" is like saying you can't give a zebra as evidence that zebras exist.

It doesn't matter though. There are codes in nonliving things. The only way around it is to define a code as something that has to be interpreted by a "mind". And then we are back to philosophy.

There seem to be at least two airtight answers to the "syllogism" above, setting aside whether DNA is itself a code.

1. Honey bee dances, human language, and whalesong, among other things, are all codes that were not consciously designed, so premise 2 fails. (Rejoinder - but those are all derivative of DNA. Counterrejoinder - the rejoinder is only true if you can show that bee dances are actually coded in bee DNA, which nobody has shown. Therefore bee dances are a code that we do not know the origin of.)

2. Even if DNA were the only code that we do not know the origin of, that does not mean that it must be the same as those we do know the origin of (that is, designed by a mind). To illustrate, take the following syllogism (assume we are in the 16th century Europe) : 1. All swans we know of are white. 2. This animal is black. 3. Therefore this animal is not a swan. The syllogism is false because there could be (and are) swans that are not white, even though none had been observed in 16th century Europe.

The cosmic fingerprints guy is a crackpot. I can't get past his page on information theory because he cites Shannon and yet he totally contradicts Shannon. This is not a matter of interpretation. He fundamentally misrepresents information theory. Given that, I don't even see why I would read the rest of his site. His argument has already failed.

It's almost as if the more you know, the less traction bad arguments can get on your imagination.

Anonymous wrote:Let's accept for the sake of argument only that
1) dna is a code
and
2) all codes we know of require a mind

To get to God, you still need to prove that because we are only thus far aware of codes that come from a mind that there aren't any codes that don't come from a mind.

In other words, (2) isn't really true because we know of DNA and, if it is a code, we don't know if it comes from a mind or not. So in order to say it must come from a mind we have to assume that which you are trying to prove, i.e., that ALL codes come from a mind.

Exactly. It's possible that DNA (and RNA) are the two examples. But saying "You can't use DNA as an example" is like saying you can't give a zebra as evidence that zebras exist.

Proteins are not living organisms. Yet prions are misshapen proteins that propagate merely by inducing changes in other proteins to fold in a similar way. Prions do not require any cell mechanics whatsoever. They are just proteins, and proteins are molecules.