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Join Date: Mar 2002
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Posts: 1,976
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God = Complex Specified Information
Recently, I noticed a particular trend in the ID arguments, especially wrt the abused notion of information. What has happened is that the insertion of theology into science is simply accomplished by substituting God for Information. Here, let' take an example from a recent article that an IDiot wrote re: Kaufmann's thesis on autocatalytic network:
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BEFORE: Paul Davies and William Dembski have pointed to a new form of information, richer than Shannon information, which includes the content of the signal as an essential component. I propose that this information, which has been alternately called specified complexity or complex specified information, is key in organizing and regulating the flow of matter and energy through biological systems and can be found as a fundamental cause in every complex dynamical system. It is specified complexity that Stuart Kauffman is grappling with in trying to explain the curious characteristics of life. It specified complexity that evades our concepts of order, organization, energy, and information (in a Shannon-Weaver sense); specified complexity involves these concepts but is not reducible to them. It is its own entity. In trying to establish a general biology, Kauffman has rooted his approach in autonomous agency rather than the specified complexity that is at the heart of such agency. The central mystery of life is not to explain the origin of autonomous agency, but rather the origin of the specified complexity that is embodied in and expressed through autonomous agency. Life, autonomous agency, is specified complexity and it is this functional information that is the enigma of modern biology and the challenge for any general biology.
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Now, simply substitute God whenever "complex specified information" (or its variants, e.g. "specified complexity" or "information") -- I did this simply with the miracle of Search and Replace on my word processor -- and check it out:
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AFTER: Paul Davies and William Dembski have pointed to a new form of information, richer than Shannon information, which includes the content of the signal as an essential component. I propose that this information, which has been alternately called specified complexity or God, is key in organizing and regulating the flow of matter and energy through biological systems and can be found as a fundamental cause in every complex dynamical system. It is God that Stuart Kauffman is grappling with in trying to explain the curious characteristics of life. It is God that evades our concepts of order, organization, energy, and information (in a Shannon-Weaver sense); God involves these concepts but is not reducible to them. It is its own entity. In trying to establish a general biology, Kauffman has rooted his approach in autonomous agency rather than God that is at the heart of such agency. The central mystery of life is not to explain the origin of autonomous agency, but rather the origin of God that is embodied in and expressed through autonomous agency. Life, autonomous agency, is God and it is this functional information that is the enigma of modern biology and the challenge for any general biology.
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Let's try another passage:
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BEFORE: This points to a startling fact: the universe’s search has been guided. There is no way it can have exhausted all possibilities (indeed, the possibilities are not even finitely prestatable) so we should seek out the reason how and why life has been constrained to the successful regions of sequence space that it currently utilizes. But if the universe’s search has been constrained in some way, some possibilities were ruled out. In other words, information was somehow added to the system. And the information constrained the search to useful regions of sequence space, so it was specified. The implication is stark: somehow, some way, specified complexity has been used to guide the production of more specified complexity. Information begets information.
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AFTER: This points to a startling fact: the universe’s search has been guided. There is no way it can have exhausted all possibilities (indeed, the possibilities are not even finitely prestatable) so we should seek out the reason how and why life has been constrained to the successful regions of sequence space that it currently utilizes. But if the universe’s search has been constrained in some way, some possibilities were ruled out. In other words, God was somehow added to the system. And God constrained the search to useful regions of sequence space, so it was specified. The implication is stark: somehow, some way, God has been used to guide the production of more specified complexity. God begets information.
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Here is yet another one:
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BEFORE:Thus information is fundamental to autonomous agency. For autonomous agency relies upon the constrained release of energy to do work. But those constraints are themselves cases of specified complexity and are generated from DNA containing complex specified information. This raises the obvious question: if information is fundamental to autonomous agency and a general biology, where does that information come from? In biological systems we know that DNA comes from pre-existing DNA. But an infinite regress is inherently unsatisfying. Where did the information-bearing DNA molecules come from in the first place? Either the information originated with some pre-existing source of information, or it arose from simpler precursors. The buildup of biological information from simplicity runs into some conceptual difficulties. The only mechanisms available to generate such information are chance and law (or selection). Certainly the formation of the first self-replicating molecule must have occurred by pure chance since selection only operates on reproducing systems. And as we have seen, the generation of functional information from random pools seems to itself require constraint and guidance in the form of information. Yet if the information did not yet exist it could not constrain and guide the search. Further adding to this conceptual difficulty is the fact that biological information is highly non-random. The tight specifications that attach to the requirements for functionality are highly ordered.but randomness is defined precisely as the absence of order. How, then, could a random process produce something that is its polar opposite?
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AFTER: Thus God is fundamental to autonomous agency. For autonomous agency relies upon the constrained release of energy to do work. But those constraints are themselves cases of God and are generated from DNA containing God. This raises the obvious question: if God is fundamental to autonomous agency and a general biology, where does God come from? In biological systems we know that DNA comes from pre-existing DNA. But an infinite regress is inherently unsatisfying. Where did the God-bearing DNA molecules come from in the first place? Either God originated with some pre-existing source of information, or it arose from simpler precursors. The buildup of God from simplicity runs into some conceptual difficulties. The only mechanisms available to generate such information are chance and law (or selection). Certainly the formation of the first self-replicating molecule must have occurred by pure chance since selection only operates on reproducing systems. And as we have seen, the generation of functional information from random pools seems to itself require constraint and guidance in the form of God. Yet if God did not yet exist it could not constrain and guide the search. Further adding to this conceptual difficulty is the fact that God is highly non-random. The tight specifications that attach to the requirements for functionality are highly ordered. But randomness is defined precisely as the absence of order. How, then, could a random process produce something that is its polar opposite?
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Nothing like defeating science by introducing vague and undefined concepts 
PS: Being a flawed replicator myself, I may have overlooked some cases where the substitions were nonsense.
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06-02-2003, 10:47 AM
