Evostories rely on ignorance. In the case of information, the only way they can succeed is if one is willing to forget what one already knows. It is easy to get confused when discussing information. There is, after all, more than one kind of information, and information itself is a specific kind of order. One quick litmus test is to ask whether or not the candidate "information" in question could be false. Could it be a forgery, a mistake, or just plain untrue? Those who aren't alert, or are disinclined to pay attention, should probably put off reading this, by the way.

Information is an abstract representation. It can represent a thing (or an action, status, or lots of stuff), but it is never the thing itself. It can be recorded on a thing, but it is not that thing either. Information is almost always found in patterns (sound, light/dark, dots & dashes, 1 & 0's, etc.); but this does not mean all patterns are information, any more than all order is information. The set/subset relationships must be kept in mind. The primary means of confusing folks about information involve confusing these relationships. Just because all information is a form of order, it does not follow that all order is/contains information. Just because information is found in patterns does not mean all patterns contain information. Some waves carry information, but this does not mean all waves are information. Some paper contains information, and to buy into what they say, you have to believe it is impossible for blank paper to exist, because all paper must therefore contain information.

There is a very good reason for information to exist in patterns. Information must somehow stand out from nature, in order to be efficiently conveyed. Were you named the sound the wind makes blowing down your street, you'd hear your name called all the time; how would you know when you were being summoned (assuming folks could pronounce this sound)? Likewise, it is impractical to type in black ink on a black piece of paper. The nature of the paper and the nature of the ink being the same, the message is very difficult to make out. For this reason, and others, nature and information have a basically antithetical relationship. In fact, one of the most common themes in secret communications is to disguise information as something natural, to one extent or another.

There are several kinds of information. Information can be linguistic or non-linguistic. Open or coded. Obvious or subtle. Intentional or unintentional. It can result from direct actions or indirect (a camera used to monitor a space, or even a tripwire). One needs to keep in mind which types of information one is talking about, rather than muddle them all together. In science, "Shannon information" is quantifiable, but need not contain meaning; "Gitt information" is meaningful, but not (yet) quantifiable. These are the two I'm familiar with, and there are others.

It should also be stressed that informatinal entropy is not the same thing as physical entropy. The entropy status of matter/energy which bears a message does not have any direct bearing on the information content thereof. Now the message-bearer will certainly degrade, but this may or may not happen before the message is received, copied, etc. Indeed, the copying process is one of the most likely events to degrade the message. Yet, depending on the method of copying, there may be no thermodynamic impact on the original.

Music is an intersting form of information to consider, especially music without lyrics. It may still contain meaning, but nobody seems to have much success putting it into words. Our capacity to describe music is very limited. In my experience, the only way to find out if I'll like a piece is to actually hear it. It might be argued then, that music isn't information, or that it isn't meaningful. I consider music to contain abstract emotional information. The fact that music always has in intelligent source makes it difficult to categorize as meaningless; and it certainly isn't random (when played correctly).

Properly written words in properly constructed sentences leave no room for doubt. They are always meaningful information. In fact, there are two levels of intelligence obvious in them. There is a convention among intelligent beings as to language, and a second convention as to the symbols used to convey the language. One must be a party to both conventions if one is to understand. Those who speak English, but have not learned to read it, they can't participate. Those who use the same symbols, but do not speak English, they can't read what I write here. Even this isn't cut & dried. "6 + 2 = 8" can be read by folks who don't speak a word of English. What matters is that a shared convention exists.

Such conventions can be built into machines. In such cases, one must know what convention the machine understands if one is to communicate with it. The phonograph record is an interesting case. Machines are used to record and play information. Humans attempting to scratch information with a needle onto the plastic that the machine could use would be facing no small difficulty. But in the end, it is the words and music that are received when the record is played. They're received by humans, so the machinery is primarily just a tool in the end. It does act, to a limited extent, upon the information; but this action is determined by its design parameters.

We begin to understand that there are several forms of information; but we know that the term does not include everything. Otherwise it would be a synonym for 'stuff'. It wouldn't have much value in science. As I think I mentioned, information is always an abstract representation. A painting contains information, as does a photograph. When we look at a picture of an elephant, we don't see the actual elephant. We still obtain information thereabout. Is a mind involved? If a camera took the picture, is a mind involved? If the camera was triggered by a motion sensor, was a mind involved? We could sidetrack onto the issue of minds quite easily, you see. But why?

Actions are also informative. If a boy says he hates apples, but steals all your apples the minute your back is turned, this means the original statement is very unlikely to be true. Actions are easiest to interpret when they contradict or confirm words. It is valid to assume one does things either because one desires to do them or because one must. It's rather hard to make the case that one just up'n chooses to do things one does not desire to do. Of course context is required in any case, before actions can be properly interpreted. Technically, the act of stealing apples isn't information; but it certainly conveys it. The tricky part is that although an act isn't information, almost all acts are the result of intent. But to argue that acts are information, one would then include accidents, and they don't work.

Working from easy cases to the trickier ones, we come to the footprint. Is the footprint information? It's probably unintentional, and it doesn't operate under conventions; but it is an abstract representation of a foot or shoe. This qualifies it as low-grade, unsophisticated information. It is the result of life, but that's not the key. The key is that it's not the foot itself. Another clue is that it can be false.

If a footprint is information, so then might be a meteor impact site. It isn't strictly accurate to say that random natural forces don't create any information whatsoever. But when we compare this type to the others, we see that it is the barest, most minimal form. Indeed, the footprint is generally better because it reveals directly a thing or two about the foot. But a meteor impact site requires a lot of investigation to unravel. It is abstract, and it can be false. I think it is information, although I understand that some maintain a higher standard.

Information of this type is low grade, and generally of less value. The lowest grade of information includes broken twigs resulting from a pedestrian passing through the woods. But how to tell such a twig from the other broken twigs is a lost art, at best. The more information blends in with its surroundings, the less practical use we have for it as a general rule.

When dealing with even this information, it must be detected and interpreted by one who understands it before it is of any use. What does a footprint mean to one who has never seen a foot? A better question might be "what do animals make of tire tracks?" because most people have feet. But in any case, one needs some knowledge in advance of the encounter.

And the obstacle is clearly seen when applied to nonlife. There's plenty of information on most hard drives, but none of it is useful to a remote-controlled aircraft. There's information on a DVD, but try & play it on a record player or in a cassette deck. Information must be intelligible before it can do any good. I still have Atari floppy disks which my PC will not read. Even if it overcame that, it wouldn't execute the programs properly.

When we look at the barest minimum grade and amount of information required for life, we can only laugh at the notion that it arose randomly in nature. The DNA code is a highly efficient language, well-structured, with syntax, with spelling conventions, with multiple messages encoded in the very same text. This is not the result of a meteor impact. It is not a footprint. It's not even on as low a level as an encyclopedia. The quantity and quality of this information is awesome. The machinery that processes it is tricked out to the max.

To assert that life arose based upon the types of information found in nature is about as absurd a thing as one can do. Yes, the erosion patterns on a rock could be considered information of a sort. Did the primitive, prebiotic components have years of college education in geology instructing them how to interpret it? I doubt it. It'd be as useless to them as the rosetta stone would be to me, moreso in fact. I have the capacity to recognize writing as writing, and it is merely improbable that I could figure it out, given time. The "building blocks" have no chance. It is impossible for them to recognize information, let alone make any attempt to investigate. Molecules just aren't that smart, so far as we know, and giving them more time does not help.

One thing we observe about cases of non-life using information: there is no "figuring out". Never. Either the information is properly encoded and can be used or it isn't. Non-living things never figure out how to use inappropriate information.

The types of information found in nature are of no use whatsoever in salvaging the evostory. Many draw the line a little higher and don't even include them, and one might just as well. Even if they could be read, they'd be pretty useless to the aspiring molecules. The luck god(ess), the selection god(ess), and the mutation god(ess) all put together couldn't make so much as a start on the project. Only those intimate with the imagination god(ess) and the grim determination god(ess) could convince themselves such totally unreasonable nonsense might happen.

Whenever this subject comes up, snowflakes are likely to be mentioned. We're told they contain information, but I have my doubts. Nobody's ever read a snowflake, or devised a machine which will do so. The favourite criticism of "Gitt information" is that it isn't quantifiable. I have not seen the information in a snowflake quantified either, so there seems to be a double standard in play.

Of course quantifiability is an arbitrary standard, which excludes much of what we know certainly to be information. This is why it comes up, usually. "Shannon information" is right to quantify because (quite obviously) Shannon was not dealing with generation or understanding of information. Shannon was dealing exclusively with transmitting information by use of machines. Nothing else. To employ his definition for any other purpose is to take things grossly out-of-context. As machines are involved, his definition cannot be used for identification of information. It assumes the information already exists, and is in a form the machine(s) can work with.

The question may arise: Why have I classified some information as lower grade than other information? It's pretty simple. Low grade information has less potential content, and requires more effort to properly interpret. High grade information is easily interpreted, and has the potential to communicate a lot more. Language is high grade, and spoken language I would say is higher grade than written because it's more efficient. A meteor impact requires a lot of work to properly interpret, and cannot tell one very much at all. Even a series of footprints has more potential because strides can be measured, and the potential exists to find the height and speed of the individual who left them.

This post is long enough. For those who may be interested, Werner Gitt's excellent books are available online for free here. In the beginning was Information is excellent.

There are also some online videos he has made somewhere. I may try to find a link to them also. Even if one has the attention span for reading books, the video lectures are still well worth watching.

I have that book as well..
In the beginning was information by Dr. Werner Gitt.
I have a few books kind of like that too.
Also a real good book is Examine the Evidence By Ralph O. Muncaster..
I'm a reader..
I read alot when I find the time too.
Articles, magazines, books.
Now I'm watching a new DVD thats out.
Interesting posts.

What has any of this got to do with creation and evolution? Can you explain in a few sentences what you are getting at?

On closer examination, the relevance to the forum seems to be, "I don't believe that life could arise from non-life." There CTD, see how simple it can be to state your case?

Russ has recently made the same claim, again. We've been through all of this before and there's the Abiogenesis thread to read for those who have forgotten. No scientist claims that DNA sprang up out of nowhere. Self-replicating molecules have been synthesised in the lab. Once you've got self-replication, natural selection can come into play, and you have evolution. Most people don't consider this to be any stupendous impossibility, and most people also understand that abiogenesis and ToE are separate, one good reason being that we don't have to know how life began in order to explain what's been happening to it ever since.

I see how simple it is to put words in people's mouths.

The obvious mistake here is that you state a conclusion as if it were the entire case. Of course no individual can make the entire case. There are far too many lines of reasoning and far to much evidence is available.

Information is relevant to many aspects of origins. Abiogenesis is but one falsehood a proper understanding of information will expose.

Russ is not discussing the same thing I am discussing in this thread. Comprehension is a part of reading you should be familiar with if you are a teacher, and I suggest that your post is the manifestation of your underestimation of the common reader's comprehension capacity.

Some, many in fact, claim the entire universe sprang up out of nowhere. Well, I'm told they're "scientists".

This is remarkably similar to something R2 said, and then turned right around and denied saying when I point out the absurdity of his statement.

http://herballure.com/ubbthreads/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=42668#Post42668
is the post where I called him on it. The other posts involved can be found by those whose browsers feature a scrollbar.

Self-replication does is not the only requirement for evolution/natural selection. R2 knew this, and... well, the link is there. I don't have to repeat it all.

Most people haven't considered the matter at all. Many may be misled and think that saying "self-replicating" is all it takes to qualify one as an expert. Many who use the term haven't a clue what it really means.

Can you name even one thing found in nature that replicates itself, aside from life? Or is all known self-replication the result of design?

Source? This is a fairly outlandish claim, IMO. It also assumes a single "ToE", so it's not very accurate.

And we don't have to discuss information in a thread about information either, apparently.

If you dispute anything I've said, it seems it would be best to get it out of the way before discussing implications, in any case. I am amazed at how many times I see people adopt bad reasoning if they foresee an implication they don't like. Facts should be evaluated on their own merit; not dismissed or distorted to suit implications, which can themselves sometimes turn out to be illusory.

Actually, the implications first methodology is a good way to become an evolutionist. Don't like rules? Don't like God? Don't want to think about Judgement Day? Evaluate the implications first, and choose what to believe; then prop up your belief by whatever means you can.

Myself, I didn't like some of the implications I found in life. I tried to convince myself evolution was possible. I wasn't quite dishonest enough to pull it off. That reality won't change and conform to false beliefs is just too certain a fact. I lacked whatever it takes to overcome it.

(1) How ironic.

(2) Let's see 'em.

or

will have to do. Can't find a forehead-smacking smiley, which is what I just got done doing when I read the bolded portion of this article.

How could anyone posit (let alone assume) a language existing in which context plays no role!

I've seen some silly stuff - we all have - but this one... you're just never gonna be fully prepared, no matter how hard you try.

The Subject Of Information... ((( Smiles )))

Life is very complex as written above as...



More complicated then scientists ever anticipated like even within a cell...
It's just amazing how it all works and communicates with each other totally amazing it works at all..
Everything that goes on within the human body...



As for the blind, it's known as hardwired now as...
The new study, which will be published in the January 2009 issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,
suggests that's not the case, since blind individuals would be unable to carry out such observational learning..

Both studies suggest an innate ability to express certain emotions with gestures and facial expressions.

Though they always try to explain things away like..
"It could be that our emotions, and the systems to regulate them, are vestiges of our evolutionary ancestry

I just don't buy it..
That it's just that easy to explain theses things away..
Even as you wrote..



And even if this is true, which I really don't know if it is or not that..



It's a lab..
Someone is manipulating putting mixing together things..
And God physically formed us, and used them too anyway..
Even if not the total picture still..
All the chemicals and elements cells and molecules doesn't really mean that much to me anyway as...
what ever is found in the earth or in life itself..
We are created/made out of anyway.

" Out of Dust"
The World Book Encyclopedia reports; " All the chemical elements that make up liveing things are also present in nonliveing matter ."
In other words, the basic chemicals that go to make up liveing organisms includeing man , are also found in the earth itself.

This harmonizes with the Bible's statement:
" And Jehovah God proceeded to form the
man out of dust from the ground."
-- Genesis 2:7..

To me it's the complexity that really matters..
Not the details...
Is that what your kind of saying above???
Of what really matters the most of all.
I can see you have studied all this for along time now..
I have some too, but mostly I have excepted what looks to be the truth to me from the things I have observed and the things
I have researched and looked up..
And more then looks like, but for me it is the truth..
Thats why I believe what I do to this day..

Stay Well
Lynn

Absolutely.

This is actually a fact set that's been used to create a lot of confusion. Life needs the elements in order to exist, so it only makes sense that they should be provided in the environment.

Some have put a spin on these observations and maintained that the elements arrange themselves and become alive. If the elements had such a property, it should've been observed by now; instead, a universal tendency of decay is observed - just the opposite.

The subject of information is important in more than one way when discussing origins.

Nobody has discovered an unguided process which produces language, syntax, context, or alphabets. Information on these levels, whenever the source is known, comes from intelligence; so the only sound conclusion one can scientifically draw is that the rule is absolute. Things that are observed to be universally true are assumed by systematic science to be universally true, even in cases where they are not observed. It is assumed the interior of the moon is subject to gravity, although we haven't been inside the moon to find out.

There are those who maintain that somehow, some way, (although they cannot describe or even imagine a way around it), we need to believe exactly the opposite. Well, that's unscientific. It's blind faith. They have an enormous burden of proof, and no means of meeting it.

A commonly told story about "Shannon information", (a favourite of antitheists because, when spun, it leads to a nonsensical conclusion) actually acknowledges the unnaturalness of information. When receiving a sequence of letters, the more surprising a letter is, the more information it is said to contain. For example, if you receive 'c', then 'a', you aren't surprised if 'b' or 'r' or 'p' follow. You are surprised if 'a' follows, or 'z'.

Now the whole premise of the story is that information is equated with surprise value. Nature isn't supposed to produce surprises. Just the opposite. When chemicals are combined in a lab, they are always expected to produce the same results. All people rely on this principle, scientists perhaps a little more heavily than others.

But everyone relies heavily upon it. How would we walk if gravity surprised us with random fluctuations all the time? We couldn't operate or even build machines if the laws of nature were surprising us with continual revisions.

Surprise is antithetical to nature. Yet we're asked to believe that nature produced more information than anyone knows how to describe. A strand of DNA contains many "surprises", and even the simplest, most whittled-down, lowered-bar version of a cell proposed by evolutionist "scientists" has to have a good amount of DNA, and has to have it organized and functional.

This is but one issue. I don't know of a way to put everything about information into a compact "nutshell" summary. Obviously nature is not capable of producing high-grade information, but this mostly applies to abiogenesis. There's also the issue of informational entropy which leads to extinction rather than improvement. And one could explore the feasibility of language origin conjectures, and even conjectures about the origin of communication in any form.

But without figuring out what information is, it's fairly difficult to discuss any of these things. Hence the attempts to nip such discussions in the bud by misdefining the term(s). My first post was primarily intended to establish a firm idea of what information is in the mind of the reader. From thence, it is easy and natural to commence investigating.

Thanks. It's fascinating stuff, in a lot of ways. One of the beautiful things here is that one already knows a lot more than one realizes about information. We learn a set of fundamental rules when we learn to talk, and although we don't go around reciting these rules we all still remember and recognize them.

I was afraid I'd forget something and I did.

Instinct is information that is not learned. It is observed in many lifeforms. Evolutionism has never come close to accounting for it. In fact instinct may be universal. I can't think of any kind of life that lacks it.

As there doesn't seem to be a lot of participation these days, I'll tell you how they attempt to explain the matter away. They say "those creatures which did such-and-such survived better than those who didn't."

That does not begin to account for the origin of instinct. Stories like that assume the instinct already exists.

I can say "If I had a billion dollars, it'd improve my chance of survival". In fact, I did say it aloud, as a matter of experimental science. But no million dollars appeared for me.

Such explanations only address the continued existence of a lifeform with a property. They don't address the origin of the property.

I have probably not listed all the cases where the existence of information defies evolutionary origin. There are probably others I'm forgetting or haven't yet encountered. Any time you observe information, you're probably looking at something that cannot be reconciled with evolutionist antihistory.

This is a great thread. Good information.

I just love comments like this:



In case some onlooker didn't get it, I wrote "How ironic" because it takes scientists to make molecules replicate in the lab, yet, people want to believe it happens by accident.

Secondly, I said "Let's see 'em" because I've been in the information field long enough to know how often the political arm of science lies for their own purposes. I'm quite sure that the term "self-replicating molecules" is being used very loosely in this context in order to make the evolution myth look more feasible.

I've personally witnessed outright lies from mainstream media and the U.S. government so many times that I stopped counting years ago. Mainstream health-related news stories lie on nearly a daily basis.

There are many people in the world without a conscience and without accountability, and most of them ascend quickly within governments and large corporations.

Hi CTD, ((( Smiles )))

I'm sorry, I didn't copy the link and the news section changes daily I read it on..
But by typeing key words on a search it might be found again there.
But it will also be published in that Journel as the news articule mentioned.
But they acknowledged that it's hardwired in intellegence not
by sight or learning...
Being blind..
It's innate..

Next thing I'm going to look for is The Evidence Bible..
I heard about it on TV..
Even though I have read things here and there..
I've never been to a board where there was an evolution site before..
So this is pretty new to me.
Not to alot of other people I see who keep up on it all..
In that kind of forum..
I guess it would be easy for people who don't to be confused by the issue or take things at face value as it can be very overwhelming at times.
If one doesn't read up or search up on it.
Like you do.
I'm just amazed by it all..
To keep up on it all must be very time consumeing for sure.
But for me, I already feel good about where I'm at with it.
Not everybody does I guess..
But I know you do..
And I see the reason why you do this.

But for me it's also like..
From the knowledge of His work, we shall know Him.
--- Robert Boyle..

Why, then are we here?
The last part of Revelations 4:11 answers:
"Because of your will they [all created things] existed and were created."
We did not will ourselves into existence.
We exist because of God's will.
For this reason, life lived solely for self-interest is empty and meaningless.
To find inner peace, joy, satisfaction, and fulfillment, we need to learn what God's will is and then bring our life into harmony with it.
Only then will we find the purpose of our creation and existence.
--- Psalm 40:8...

Thats what I believe as life catches up to you..
Like the inborn feelings of good and bad or right and wrong..
Doesn't always stop someone from doing the wrong thing or makeing mistakes..
But the feeling inside is there neverless..
We just bypass it..
Some more then others.
But it's easy to do.

.

Hi Russ, ((( Smiles )))



Yes.. Some people must want too believe that..
That it's all an accident, must be easier that way.
But at the same time the offer of something much better.
Of God's future plans, thats even better in the long run
thats how it looks to me.
Then there being nothing to look forward too just live for today only and not think about tommorrow at all..
As there is none.
Of course for thoses who like to play those odds and for thoses who make their own rules..
It's a calculated risk to take.
It's a choice.



Yes the term..
It sounds like there wasen't a lab at all..
It's just self replicating all over the earth..



Yes.. I notice that more and more to be true..
It's really sad as the planet/world is in such a mess..
It can't last too much longer as someday it has to give out.
As they are ruining the earth and that is so true.
Thats what they do..

I've been giving it a little thought, and the "self-replicating molecule" isn't just a bogus, bar-lowering misdefinition of life targeting the uneducated. It's also a red herring.

There are no self-replicating molecules in living cells. Every component we know of is replicated, alright, but they do so with the help of other components - not in isolation.

My memory isn't perfect, but I seem to recall a story of "self-replicating molecules" being engineered in a lab. They had to be supplied with exactly the right components. The components consisted of exact duplicate molecules strategically split (not in half exactly) into two parts. When the two pieces aligned with the complete template, final assembly took place.

Now those who are serious about this stuff should search about a little on their own. The example I have tried to recall is woefully inadequate. A lot of smarts went into engineering it; it's not operating on the same principles as life; it has to be supplied with perfect, complex molecular parts; and it only completes the very final step in the assembly process. And of course any "mutation" at all would hopelessly ruin it, as the intelligent agents who worked so hard to design it admitted.

It is difficult to describe persons such as conduct such activities. It takes some smarts and knowledge to design such things, but the usual motive to do so seems to be in direct conflict with science, learning, knowledge and intellect. The logic is flawed in more than one way. It does not follow that if a man can engineer and construct such a "self-replicating molecule" in a lab, unguided forces with no lab or equipment can and did engineer and construct life. Not even close!

I still think the only strategy involved here is to trade on the "scientific-sounding" term, and target the ignorant. I caution anyone who would buy into this to at least find out what the terms mean. Or would you prefer to follow in the footsteps of those who have chosen a belief without even knowing what it is?

That's pure anything-but-the-truth-ism right there, and we have seen it before. Anything-but-the-truth-ism is a self-defeating philosophy by definition, because it acknowledges the very truth it seeks to reject as being true.

Self-Replicating Molecules



That's an excellent point.

The banking elite spreads these types of ideas in order to fool those of the masses already inclined to believe evolution. Those of the masses are easily fooled because of their emotionally-based personal biases.

We have a condition today where people use their emotional bias to determine their conclusions rather than observation alone.

The legitimizing of emotionalism in society was necessary to accomplish this condition because one who relies on pure observation (i.e. science) would conclude that a Designer external to the system (this universe) is responsible for the arrangement of this universe.

Ones faith in evolution is the result of ones inability to make truly objective observations; Self-centeredness.

It is funny that the evolutionists love Shannon Information so. It is not their friend, of course. They love the confusion that arises because of a couple of Shannon's choices. He employs numbers backwards, so that as entropy increases the numbers increase.

But Shannon's methods can only be applied after a message has been encoded. This means a convention must exist. Random forces cannot create codes any more than they can post intelligent responses on this forum.

There must be a language and a code for transmitting the language, before any "Shannon information" even exists. Both require an intelligent source.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/11/071114151513.htm


Maybe if they'd stop assuming evolutionism is true, they wouldn't be so surprised every time they turn around?

Just a thought...

Here's a game: "find" how many times the term 'information' occurs on this page

http://www.answers.com/topic/chromosome