<snip>:
> Bertvan
> Hi Tedd. I am not interested in discussing the details of scientific
> evidence. That is done in great detail on the web, and will eventually be
> settled by scientists. People with scientific degrees express differences
> of opinion, and I tend to trust those scientists who are civil, are
tolerant
> of differences of opinion, and don't misrepresent those who disagree with
> them. However, whom I trust is beside the point. The disagreements will
> eventually be decided by science. Whether or not resistance to antibiotic
> constitutes an increase of information is one of those disagreements.
> Whether or not you feel it "deserves" to be taken seriously, some
scientists
> apparently do.
Chris
It does not have to be an *increase* in information for it to be evolution.
It is a change in information, and that is all that may be needed. Further,
it is not "one of those disagreements." It is a question of understanding
empirical fact. Further, it has long since *been* settled by science,
because information is empirically measurable and comparable.
Johnson, et al, choose not to bother learning about what information *is*,
apparently because then they'd have to admit facts that refute their
ideological commitment to ID. If, by chance, you are not familiar with his
views, consider the following from "Defeating Darwinism by Opening Minds."
After a lot of blather about information, he summarizes:
Let's Review What We Know
So far we have the following basic points.
First, life consists not just of matter (chemicals) but of matter
and information.
Second, information is not reducible to matter, but is a different kind
of "stuff" altogether. A theory of life thus has to explain not just the
origin of the matter but also the independent origin of the information.
Third, complex, specified information of the kind found in a book or a
biological cell cannot be produced either by chance or at the direction of
physical and chemical laws. . . .
With those general principles in mind, now let's go to the
biology. Are organisms designed, or are they the products of unintelligent
natural causes? ["Defeating Darwinism by Opening Minds," p. 75]
Is information a "stuff" at all? No. It is merely some or all of the
identity of something. Information as it relates to genetics is information
encoded in the *pattern*, the *ordering* of molecular components. But, if
you make information seem to be some kind of "stuff" rather than a state or
event or pattern or aspect of the identity of something, *then* it becomes
pseudo-plausible to argue that information comes from a designer, which is
exactly what Johnson then attempts to do.
But, since information in fact, in the real world, is merely what things
are and how they are organized or related, and since we know that "random"
(not intelligently directed) events can and often *do* change how things
are organized, or what things are, the fact that genetic modifications
often involve changes in, and increases of, information becomes
non-remarkable. The burning of hydrogen to make water produces molecules of
higher information content than either the oxygen or hydrogen atoms
separately. Stirring cream into coffee increases the information content of
the coffee, and though this is commonly done under intelligent direction,
it is obvious that the mixing of different substances often occurs
naturally and that it need not be intelligently directed. The genome is,
effectively, one big molecule with numerous components. Is there *any* law
of physics or chemistry that would *prevent* the replications of genomes
from having components that the "parent" genome does not have?
No. In fact, it can be easily proved empirically that this happens. That,
ladies and gentlemen, *usually* increases the information content of the
genome, by *any* method we have of measuring information (i.e., number of
total bits and compressibility, mainly).
In short, Johnson is using a bizarre and anti-scientific pseudo-concept of
information in order to claim that information does not and cannot increase
via "random" (i.e., naturalistic, governed by causal relations among
physical factors rather than by intervening intelligence).
Does life consist of matter *and* information? No. It consists of matter
organized in a certain way and behaving in a certain way. There is no
*additional* "stuff" added to matter to make it live, any more than there
is additional "stuff" added to a pile of computer parts to make them into a
functioning computer. The computer works because of the nature of the parts
and their relationships with each other, not because of some bizarre sort
of additional "stuff" (of *any* kind). Life shows *no* signs of being any
different in this respect.
Finally, what about "complex specified information"? Is life, or does life
include, *specified* information? No; it's information that (often)
survives and replicates. Only life "informed" in functionally useful ways
can do this. If the heart pumps the blood backwards against the valves in
veins, the organism will fail. Life is organized the way it is because
millions of variations in organization that were slightly more functional
were allowed to survive and replicate, while the (many more) that were
organized in non-functional ways died out. The process is can be cumulative
as long as it continues and as long as the environment and "randomizing"
physical factors continue to lead to new variations that increase
functional organization occur, as long as there are some replications that
have a better (i.e., "fitter") information content than their parents had.
>
> I agree with Johnson when he suggests that the seemingly emotional
attachment
> to RM&NS is ideological, just as the attachment of many people to ID is
> probably ideological. I am merely an observer, neither an atheist nor a
> theist, who doesn't believe random mutation and natural selection is an
> adequate explanation for the complexity of life.
Chris
I don't, either (though it depends on what you mean by "random," which is a
term that we should probably not even use except in extremely specialized
contexts because it is almost *always* ambiguous). But that's not the
issue. The issue is whether the processes that account for the complexity
of life are naturalistic processes not guided by intelligence or are
processes that *are* guided by intelligence. "RM&NS" is simply an
ID-theorist way of mis-characterizing naturalistic evolutionary theory to
make it seem less plausible. Unless you are willing to give us a
sufficiently rigorous and sufficiently inclusive definition of "RM&NS," you
are simply misrepresenting modern evolutionary theory (as I've pointed out,
at great length, before -- and recently).
Bertvan
> Since I don't believe
> science has any business making ideological statements, any acceptable
theory
> should accommodate either atheism or theism. I personally don't see how a
> theist could buy RM&NS,
Chris
This is easy: God created a universe at random and let it do its thing.
> but I respect the decision of those theists who
> apparently manage to do so. My main concern in the controversy is the
> tactics employed by each side of the argument. For what my judgement is
> worth, those writers who support ID (or oppose RM&NS) usually sound
> reasonable. On the other hand, those denouncing the slightest criticism of
> RM&NS more often use McCarthey-like tactics. If RM&NS is so obviously the
> superior explanation, why all the effort to ensure that the ID position is
> not heard?
Chris
*Really?* Can you give even *one* example of someone attempting to ensure
that the ID position is not heard? (Keep in mind that it has *been* heard
for about two thousand years, at least, and in its modern form for at least
two *hundred* years (since Paley), considerably longer than Darwinism in
*any* form has been around). The only objections in this area that I've
seen are to teaching it as *science* rather than religion (which it is, in
nearly all cases, and which is why Johnson and Jones and the rest are
always seeking to promote non-naturalism (i.e., supernaturalism, i.e.,
*theism*)).
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