Supernatural information supplier

Good questions. What are your answers then? I suspect that the "evos" here have done a lot more of that than the majority of the other side.We have asked, rather a large number of times for a step-by-step example of where the thinking has gone wrong when the natural world is studied. This has not, that I've noticed, been forthcoming. It begins to seem to me that people bringing this point up haven't thought it through themselves yet. Still waiting.As a side note,
This topic is about the supernatural information supplied, the thread is still (days and days later) reusing my post title of "The Definition of Information" and we haven't had a quantifiable, clear definition of information yet. (Somewhere, in some thread someone agreed that Shannon information was ok but I don't think it has been followed up on much. Or wasn't when someone noted that that information can easily be supplied by the evolutionary process.)

Now you have introduced a new term "meaning". Then you use the term info again. Information has a definition. Meaning you know need to supply a definition of.The arguement from many anti-evolutionists is that new "information" cant be supplied by the evolutionary mechanisms. We are NOT talking about the origin of life or those mechanisms. We are saying that once there are living evolving things then the mechanisms can supply all the changes needed to explain life on earth.The idea that information isn't "useful" without some attached semantics is valid. However, there are mechanisms in living things to supply the semantics. Any changes in the genome may or may not be "meaningful". If they are not they either produce no change or kill the organism. The mechanism of natural selection adds meaning be stripping out all the harmful 'meaningless' changes. The result are 'meaningful' changes.There is no need to a supernatural information supplied once the basic mechanisms are in place.Now we back up to the origin of life. Research so far shows that there may be simpler mechanisms that can also support an evolutionary process. We haven't demonstrated that with a great deal of firmness yet. "We don't know" is hardly a good basis on which to step out into the supernatural.

Well, we've had a number of attempts at getting someone to define other ways for gettting knowledge about the natural world. So far nothing has come from that.If we put the supernatural in right up front then why would we do any research. We already know the answer don't we? God did it. End of story.If we examine the success of this approach over history we find that it has always failed. That is another good reason for figureing that it just might be the wrong approach yet again.Science isn't defined as dealing with all knowledge. It has proved to be very good at learning about the natural world and how it works. You have a better way: describe it and show how it works better.and a Merry Christmas to you.

You seem to suggest that it would be wrong to give up on research and say "goddidit" then you say:
"unproductive hypotheses like the prebiotic soup."In other words (as I read it anyway) "give up". How is this not inconsistant. We will get to a good answer to the origin of life if we keep going. The line between in the boundary of science and not moves. Science itself has some fuzzy edges. The process may start with very wild speculations and the opponents of those may legitimately cry "That not science, it's fantasy!". However, these wild thoughts may allow the generation of some testable hypothoses.Then there are technological issues. The m-theory stuff may in principle be testable but the technology may be out of reach so it will stay on the fringes (at best) for a long time.Anything for which there is no possibility of independent evidence being available (a purely supernatural god for one) would always remain outside of the perview of science. Anything inherently (or contrived to be) unfalsifiable would also be.It seems that all of ID as currently set up is outside of science in fact.This message has been edited by NosyNed, 12-26-2004 12:05 AM

Which receipe of soup? If one is wrong does that mean, again, you say give up? "Is known to be nothing like..." -- odd thing for you to say, you happen to know what the conditions were like? You see, there you go again, unknowable eh? No wonder you're a fan of the supernatural explanation. Your kind of thinking would have us still locked in the ignorance of the dark ages; praying that the plague would pass our door. And what means would you use to determine how life arose on earth in the first place? We now know that the zap-poofing of complete modern animals described in the Bible is wrong. It doesn't describe the receipe of the pre-biotic soup. Where will you get that receipe then? Please supply links to the posts in those threads where you define religion in such a way that methodological (not philosophical) natural ism is a religion.Supply the link to where you show the fatal flaw in the logic please. I don't recall you doing so.Your last paragraph doesn't seem relevant to me. I don't know what you are getting at there. I'll drop in on the "code" and meaning discussion again and see where it is at.

Isn't this a bit of an overstatement. We are, I think, talking specifically about information which the context gives meaning to.There are, in living things, "meaning" machines. These take the information content of DNA and produce living structures which have meaning in the environments in which they find themselves.

Bumping msg 172 for Dshortt. There were questions there trying to clarify what you meant.I don't remember seeing any clarification.

We are agreeing.The information doesn't have any dependence on the meaning.However, that doesn't mean that the meaning isn't connected to the information. In the specific context that we are talking about the information in the genome has meaning which "some system" (the biological one supplies. I agree that has nothing to do with the engineering which is concerned with information independent of meaning.