From: me22over7@gmail.com   
      
   On 7/12/2025 4:45 am, RonO wrote:   
   > On 12/6/2025 1:19 AM, 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.'   
   >>   
   >> Would Progressive Creation (RTB) fit under occasionalism?   
   >   
   > Probably not.  The Reason to Believe creationists want to exclude   
   > descent with modification.  In it's place they claim that their designer   
   > is recreating new species (some of them can still interbreed, so they   
   > could be sub species) just a little different from the existing species.   
   >   They want to claim de novo creation is involved and not descent with   
   > modification.   
   >   
   > You should have seen Behe's claims about whale "devolution".  He claimed   
   > that a lot of the evolution back to an aquatic lifestyle involved   
   > breaking genes to revert back to the phenotype.  He claimed that   
   > selection for these broken genes would be what would be expected by   
   > Darwinian evolution.  Unfortunately for Behe the broken genes are not   
   > all that had to happen during the evolution back to an aquatic   
   > lifestyle.  The new structures that needed to form like Baleen in the   
   > place of teeth had to also evolve.  It wasn't just losing things like   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)