Rob writes:
It picks up the pattern. The complex, specified, non-repeating pattern. And this pattern serves to operate the system. Just as the DNA operates the living system.
So, you acknowledge that information can be read by materialistic objects? This information could also be copied (essentially, read and duplicated, but not understood) if the information didn't do anything, but was in the right language (such as an encrypted file, which can be copied, but no meaning can be extracted), couldn't it?
Evolution reads information from the environment (albeit very slowly), and forms organisms based on that environment (hence, they end up specified by their environment). In essence, it does exactly what the computer does when copying the floppy disk (The only difference is that the 'copying' isn't so much making duplicate copies as making things that fit the original, such as making a lock given the key, instead of cutting new keys). Input = environment, copying mechanism = descent with modification + natural selection, Output = organisms. We should not be amazed that the organisms are complex, because the environment itself is complex.
It is not the job of the evolutionary biologist to explain the origins of the information in the environment (i.e. natural laws and existence of matter), but cosmologists and theoretical physicists.
"Der Mensch kann was er will; er kann aber nicht wollen was er will." (Man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills.) - Arthur Schopenhauer
Help inform the masses - contribute to the EvoWiki today!