From: 69jpil69@gmail.com   
      
   On Sun, 7 Dec 2025 14:21:51 +1100, MarkE  wrote:   
      
   >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.   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)