From: me22over7@gmail.com   
      
   On 20/11/2025 11:07 pm, Ernest Major wrote:   
   > On 19/11/2025 11:00, MarkE wrote:   
   >>   
   >> However, if I understand Meyer's claim, he's saying that the base-pair   
   >> sequences in DNA are not physio-chemically determined, but rather DNA   
   >> is a neutral substrate for storing an arbitrary, immaterial code. (In   
   >> the same way, different sequences of 0s and 1s on your hard drive have   
   >> essentially the same mass and energy, and are therefore not "physical"   
   >> in that sense.)   
   >>   
   >> However, evolution is claimed to be a non-mind process that   
   >> accumulates particular code sequences, i.e. information. Even if   
   >> Meyer's assertion that "Information is a massless, immaterial entity"   
   >> is accepted, he still needs to show why evolution (even in-principal)   
   >> cannot be a source of such information.   
   >   
   > There are different views as to what the information in DNA is. On the   
   > one hand one can take an infomatics viewpoint and use the Kolmogorov   
   > complexity as a measure of the amount of information present. On the   
   > other hand one could follow Dawkins and argue that natural selection   
   > impresses an incomplete record of the historical environment of   
   > ancestral populations on the genome of a species, and this is the   
   > information in the genome. Similarly phylogenetic bracketing can be used   
   > to infer with various degrees of confidence ancestral phenotypes,   
   > habitats and distributions - that's information extractable from clade   
   > pan-genomes.   
   >   
   > Meyer would seem to need a definition of information which can't be   
   > added by evolutionary processes, but yet still differs between taxa.   
   >   
   > If you stipulate that evolutionary processes don't change the   
   > information content of genomes, then as it is clear that evolutionary   
   > processes do change the DNA sequence of genomes, then one concludes,   
   > from the voluminous evidence for common descent with modification   
   > through the agency of natural selection and other processes, that all   
   > genomes have the same information content, and the claim that an   
   > intelligent designer is required to account for the information   
   > evaporates. (There might be a circular argument as a residue.)   
   >   
   > If one the other hand you accept that evolutionary processes do change   
   > the information content of genomes then you difficulty in justifying the   
   > need for a mind to act as the source of information. On the one hand you   
   > could resort to occasionalism (Islamo-Calvinist determinism) and deny   
   > the existence of natural processes, a la Ray Martinez (suspected of   
   > being an occasionalist evolutionist). On the other hand you could argue   
   > that the information is imported from the environment and a mind was   
   > needed to create the initial pool of information, in which case you're   
   > basically back at the Cosmological Argument. If, on the gripping hand,   
   > you assert this much and no more, you need to identify limits to how   
   > much can be achieved by evolutionary processes. If you don't, all you   
   > have is an appeal to incredulity.   
   >   
      
   Apologies for the delay in this response.   
      
   Within the ranks of ID, Behe (at least) accepts some degree of common   
   descent and therefore genome/information change. Although his recent   
   book Darwin Devolves has this blurb on Amazon:   
      
   'A system of natural selection acting on random mutation, evolution can   
   help make something look and act differently. But evolution never   
   creates something organically. Behe contends that Darwinism actually   
   works by a process of devolution―damaging cells in DNA in order to   
   create something new at the lowest biological levels. This is important,   
   he makes clear, because it shows the Darwinian process cannot explain   
   the creation of life itself. “A process that so easily tears down   
   sophisticated machinery is not one which will build complex, functional   
   systems,” he writes.'   
      
   Would Progressive Creation (RTB) fit under occasionalism?   
      
   The nature and measurement of information seems slippery. As you   
   mention, is it Kolmogorov complexity or Darwkin's "incomplete record of   
   the historical environment", or something else?   
      
   ID posits a lawlike conservation of information, which I find   
   intuitively appealing, but Dembski's efforts to formally define this   
   have yet to land it seems.   
      
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