From: Robert Schneider (rjschn39@bellsouth.net)
Date: Tue Nov 19 2002 - 18:57:36 EST
Could it be that Dembski is a Platonist?
----- Original Message -----
From: "Glenn Morton" <glenn.morton@btinternet.com>
To: <asa@calvin.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, November 19, 2002 5:18 PM
Subject: conservation of information
>
> Another very silly idea which Dembski propounds in his book Intelligent
> Design is the hopelessly flawed, easily falsified concept that
information
> is conserved. Dembski writes:
>
> ÏSince natural causes are precisely those characterized by
> chance, law or a
> combination of the two, the broad conclusion of the last section may be
> restated as follows: Natural causes are incapable of generating CSI. I
call
> this result the law of conservation of information, or LCI for short. The
> phrase Ïlaw of conservation of informationÌ is not new. In The Limits of
> Science Peter Medawar used it to describe the weaker claim that
> deterministic laws cannot produce novel information.Ó William A. Dembski,
> Intelligent Design, (Downers Grove: Intervarsity Press, 2001), p.170
>
> This is a category mistake. The inability of Natural causes to generate
CSI
> doesnÌt mean that information is conserved. Information might be
destroyed.
> The two categories are very, very different. Dembski then uses this idea
to
> argue against evolution. Dembski writes:
>
> "Given the law of conservation of information, it follows that inheritance
> with modification by itself is incapable of explaining the increased
> complexity of CSI that organisms have exhibited in the course of natural
> history. Inheritance with modification needs therefore to be supplemented.
> ÏThe most obvious candidate here is, of course, selection. Selection
> presupposes inheritance with modification, but instead of merely shifting
> around already existing information, selection also introduces new
> information. By seizing on advantageous modifications, selection is able
to
> introduce new information into a population. The majority view in
> biologyÛknown as the neo-Darwinian synthesisÛis that selection and
> inheritance with modification together are adequate to account for all the
> CSI inherent in organisms. As a parsimonious account of the origin and
> development of life, this view has much to commend it. Nonetheless this
view
> places undue restrictions on the flow of biological information,
> restrictions that biological systems routinely violate.Ó William A.
Dembski,
> Intelligent Design, (Downers Grove: Intervarsity Press, 2001), p. 177
>
> He then goes on to claim that irreducible complexity can't arise by chance
> and thus selection doesn't create new information.
>
> Dembski also erroneously writes:
>
> ÏThe first corollary can be understood in terms of data storage and
> retrieval. Data constitute a form of CSI. Ideally data would stay
unaltered
> over time. Nonetheless, entropy being the corrupting force that it is,
data
> tend to degrade and need constantly to be restored. Over time magnetic
tapes
> deteriorate, pages yellow, print fades and books disintegrate. Information
> by be eternal, but the physical media that house information are subject
to
> natural causes and are thoroughly ephemeral. The first corollary
> acknowledges this fact.Ó William A. Dembski, Intelligent Design, (Downers
> Grove: Intervarsity Press, 2001), p. 170
>
> Information is simply not eternal. Period. I can think of numerous cases
> where information is lost. Consider the Alexandrian library. This ancient
> library had lots of information (defined by Shannon or colloquially). I
> burned down around 600 A.D. It went up in smoke. If information is
> conserved, where the millions of bits of info housed in the Alexandrian
> Library go when it burned? We canÌt find that info in the sky or in the
> smoke. The information was not preserved, it is not eternal and it was
NOT,
> repeat NOT conserved.
>
> Dembski claims that a bacterial flagellum exceeds 500 bits of information.
> Great. Lets assume that based on this, I have around 3000 bits of
> information to define me and my body. Assume when I die, that the ID
> proponents are really sick of me. THey take my body and grind it to
powder.
> Now, I exist as a structureless powder in the bottom of a mortar. Where
> exactly is the 3000 bits of information which made me? Where did it go.
How
> was it conserved? What you have is a structureless pile of white powder
> which will not speak to you nor argue incessantly as I do. What happens to
> the information in a cremated body. What receptical preserves this
'eternal'
> information? Dembski's idea of information conservation is so silly as to
> be hardly worth discussing, except that people actually take this stuff
> seriously.
>
> What Dembski misses in the last quoted paragraph is that information is
not
> separable from the physical media. information is a physical thing.
> Mathematics can only be done by manipulating physical objects. Information
> isn't out there on the ether waiting to be captured or hiding when the
> phsyical object decays.
>
>
> glenn
>
> see http://www.glenn.morton.btinternet.co.uk/dmd.htm
> for lots of creation/evolution information
> anthropology/geology/paleontology/theology\
> personal stories of struggle
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