From: me22over7@gmail.com   
      
   On 6/12/2025 9:34 pm, jillery wrote:   
   > On Sat, 6 Dec 2025 18:19:56 +1100, MarkE  wrote:   
   >   
   >> 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.'   
   >   
   >   
   > If "Darwinian process" refers to random mutation plus natural   
   > selection of extant life, then it's technically correct to say that it   
   > can't explain the creation of life itself.  But that's a disingenuous   
   > statement, as Darwinism technically refers to how life evolves, not   
   > how life was created; that's called abiogenesis.  ISTM   
   > anti-evolutionists go out of their way to conflate these terms.   
   >   
   > OTOH it's almost certainly true that *abiotic* processes followed   
   > similar Darwinian patterns and rules to randomly sort out which   
   > chemicals were involved in abiogenesis.   
   >   
   >   
   >> 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.   
   >   
   >   
   > There are two proper meanings to "conservation of information".  One   
      
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