[_ Old Earth _] More on the role of Information

[brother Paul]

Barb...start with Genesis 2:7 and 6:17...then if you need more google "Strongs" and key in "the breath of life"

 

[Barbarian]

The first refers to God directly breathing the breath of life into man, which made him unique in creation. The second doesn't say that God breathed anything into anything.

Do you have anything that actually says what you claimed?

 

[brother Paul]

No that's good enough...other sections are open to interpretation. God gave mankind LIFE....

 

[Sinthesis]

That's not evolution. People believe all kinds of stuff, but evolution doesn't kick in until life already exists.

Precisely Sinth, that’s been a point I have been making since the beginning…evolution via natural selection does NOT occur until life already exists….therefore life cannot be the product of Natural Selection or Evolution. But you would be surprised at how many atheists I have discussed and debated the issue with who claim it MUST have happened that way.

Intelligent design is not scientifically inferred from naturally occurring evidence. It can be assumed from an incomplete understanding of naturally occurring evidence, which is what intelligent design relies on. However, as scientific understanding expands, those who have staked their faith on unexplained wonder may face a crises when those wonders are explained via natural processes.

Low probability does not mean something is impossible, only unlikely. If I give you a 1077 sided dice and ask you to throw it, you don't have to wait until the end of the universe to see what you rolled. You may have rolled the magic number on your first try. I'm pretty sure God can roll whatever He wants. As improbable as it might be, we do exist.

A 10 to the 77th power die in a Universe with 10 to the 65th power number of atoms? Wow….a cool imaginary scenario….if it were plausible it could happen once as you have said only the number is 10 to the 87th power (magnitudes more than even 10 to the 77th) and the die would have had to have fallen on the same number of probability millions of times multiplied by each number of possible carbon life form that functions with actively productive proteins. So in effect the reality we have is even more miraculous than the imaginary scenario.

So yes only an Intelligence could produce this amount of information. Just think of all the information necessary to produce all the life forms of the Cambrian alone. Wow!!!!

Commenting on my comment of the lock analogy you replied that the odds...are actually pretty good, because life makes it its business to record those combinations for use by the current and future generations. Your cells are not coming up with these myriad combinations out of thin air, they are inherited. If your cellular machinery messes up a combination, either it proves beneficial and gets passed on to your kids, or it kills you before you can have kids, so dies with you.(amongst a whole lot of other possible scenarios, but you get the idea)…but actually sequencing would make no sense if the order of the DNA bases were meaningless. Genome sequencing relies on the principle that the precise order of the bases is critical for function.

But that is not the end-all of what is involved. After recent noble prize winner Tomas Lindahl discovered and proved the incredible level of instability of the each strand of DNA in the 70’s (how outside of the living system it is in, it would degenerate) this led to a recent Nobel Prize for discovering (with two others) base excision repair, which constantly counteracts the collapse of our DNA. It is a system of functions (that had to have been present in the earliest cells of the earliest DNA dependent life forms) if not already extant would have made LIFE as we know it impossible.

This process must take place millions of times a day in just one human body just for the cells of that body to maintain their integrity and not fall into chemical chaos. Now you imagine… imagine "a molecular system that constantly counteracts DNA collapse" not being already in place now that we know of the molecule’s instability. Without these systems being simultaneously present with life’s first genomes there would have been no cells…the DNA NECESSARY to provide the functional proteins for all subsequent evolution would have degenerated quickly….the laws and principles governing the development of these inter-dependent systems (and there are many) to me infer forethought…forethought of a highly sophisticated nature more powerful than any 100 human beings combined or anything they can conjure or conjecture. So in effect, the reality we have is even more miraculous than any imaginary or theoretical scenario.

You are still trying to tie evolution to the creation of life. We don't know how or where or when the first life formed, or even what it was like. However it began, I imagine its genesis was unlikely enough to be considered a miracle even if it was due to so called natural processes. Yet once life was around it did what it does best, which is utilize energy to stack the odds in its favor for reproduction. Given an ever changing environment, part of this strategy which seems to work is differentiation and competition. Arguments against evolution that rely on improbability do so by removing life processes from their historic context and then naively wondering how they could ever come about on their own. This is a straw man.

 

[Barbarian]

Darwin, after all, merely suggested that God just created the first living things.

 

[Barbarian]

No that's good enough...other sections are open to interpretation. God gave mankind LIFE....

But the verses you cited don't say that He breathed life into other living things. Only man was so mentioned. And the account says that it gave him a living soul.

 

[brother Paul]

Thats why I said open to interpretation...God gave man life....

 

[Barbarian]

Ann. N.Y. Acad. Sci. ISSN 0077-8923
ANNALS OF THE NEW YORK ACADEMY OF SCIENCES
The use of information theory in evolutionary biology
Christoph Adami
Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan.
Department of Physics and Astronomy, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan.

BEACON Center for the Study of Evolution in
Action, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan
Information is a key concept in evolutionary biology. Information stored in a biological organism’s genome is used to generate the organism and to maintain and control it. Information is also
that which evolves. When a population adapts to a local environment, information about this environment is fixed in a representative genome. However, when an environment changes, information can be lost. At the same time, information is processed by animal brains to survive in complex environments, and the capacity for information processing also evolves. Here, I review applications of information theory to the evolution of proteins and to the evolution of information processing in simulated agents that adapt to perform a complex task.

 

[Barbarian]

Claude Shannon, population geneticist

November 5, 2013 in talks | Tags: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories, eugenics, information theory, population genetics, Shannon


Last Saturday I returned from Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories where I spoke at the Genome Informatics Meeting on Stories from the Supplement. On Monday I delivered the “Prestige Lecture” at a meeting of the Center for Science of Information on New Directions in the Science of Information and I started by talking about Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL). That is because the Eugenics Record Office at CSHL is where Claude Shannon, famous father of information theory, wrapped up his Ph.D. in population genetics in 1939.


The fact that Shannon did his Ph.D. in population genetics– his Ph.D. was titled “An Algebra for Theoretical Genetics“– is unknown to most information theorists and population geneticists. It is his masters thesis that is famous (for good reason– it can be said to have started the digital revolution), and his paper in 1948 that founded information theory. But his Ph.D. thesis was impressive in its own right: its contents formed the beginning of my talk to the information theorists, and I summarize the interesting story below.
https://liorpachter.wordpress.com/2013/11/05/claude-shannon-population-geneticist/

 

[brother Paul]

The OP video was not referring to Information Theory which deals with information being generated from something but more so regarding the information required to form the something generating. The information preceding not flowing.

 

[Edward]

That would be rather surprising, since "evolution" (Darwin's "descent with modification") is defined as "change in allele frequency over time." It would be like a professed Christian, who didn't believe in God.



Leaving off the fact that earth is not dead (i.e. formerly living) God says that life came from non-living matter. And I believe Him. You should, too.



This could do with a rewrite. I don't know what you're trying to say here.



Show us a specific example, and how it is impossible for natural selection to produce it. Given that we now know that the fundamental chemicals of life can form abiotically, it's rather unreasonable to deny that God could do it.

OK, for the sake of discussion, if we assume that God created everything, then his creation(s) began to evolve themselves... I agree that God could do it, but...why would He create something which needed or would need modifications to continue? Why not just create them right to begin with?

 

[Sinthesis]

OK, for the sake of discussion, if we assume that God created everything, then his creation(s) began to evolve themselves... I agree that God could do it, but...why would He create something which needed or would need modifications to continue? Why not just create them right to begin with?

Why didn't God create you without the stain of original sin?

 

[Barbarian]

OK, for the sake of discussion, if we assume that God created everything, then his creation(s) began to evolve themselves...

Nothing exists at all, without His attention. Nature is, only because He wills it so.

I agree that God could do it, but...why would He create something which needed or would need modifications to continue?

Observe His history with Israel. Process seems to be His way.

Why not just create them right to begin with?

What makes you suppose that it wasn't right?

 

[Edward]

Why didn't God create you without the stain of original sin?

Hmmm, what?

Nothing exists at all, without His attention. Nature is, only because He wills it so.



Observe His history with Israel. Process seems to be His way.



What makes you suppose that it wasn't right?

Process seems to be His way...
Perhaps this is correct. That is how He worked with Israel.

What makes me suppose it wasn't right?
Touche' brother. Maybe it was, I don't know His ways or thoughts... They are above mine.

I just think that God was involved at every step, that if evo did happen, that He planned it that way and provided the info for it. I don't think it is an either or thing where evo just happened.

 

[Sinthesis]

OK, for the sake of discussion, if we assume that God created everything, then his creation(s) began to evolve themselves... I agree that God could do it, but...why would He create something which needed or would need modifications to continue? Why not just create them right to begin with?

Why didn't God create you without the stain of original sin?

Hmmm, what?



Process seems to be His way...
Perhaps this is correct. That is how He worked with Israel.

What makes me suppose it wasn't right?
Touche' brother. Maybe it was, I don't know His ways or thoughts... They are above mine.

I just think that God was involved at every step, that if evo did happen, that He planned it that way and provided the info for it. I don't think it is an either or thing where evo just happened.

You were created with the stain of original sin, such that you need the modification of salvation in order to continue into eternity. Why didn't God just create you right to begin with?

 

[brother Paul]

Sinth...
The phrase “created with the stain of original sin” indicates for me that your view has been strongly influenced by Calvin. I just would like you to realize this thought has been influenced by this theology. Most Christians (EVER), especially for the first 2 or 4 HUNDREDS of years (but still now) do NOT hold this view.

Each person is not a physical individual creation of God (that alone is not in the Bible). When God created humankind He created Humankind “very good”, BUT with the ability to make moral choices. All other humans are formed via the process He built in of pro-creation via being fruitful and multiplying.

Secondly, “original sin” just refers to the first sin, and was not even understood judicially until much later (and still is not seen this way by most of Christianity). This idea of a “stain” is only a latter Roman Catholic addition. Infants are not born or created condemned or condemnable, but because of the fallen human propensity toward self-will, self-satiation, self-exaltation, etc., we will all (very early on) come to a place (at some point) where we decide to be our own lord (Genesis 3:5) as a god unto ourselves deciding good or evil based on what is right in our own eyes.

God does not “create” people WITH original sin, that would be abominable and is contrary to the revealed will of God. We all sin because we want to and choose to (sometimes even in ignorance). We are therefore ALL destined to what is described as condemnation because sin cannot remain in the presence of God. He cannot be LORD if you are the lord. Salvation is God offering a way out because He does not want anyone condemned (eternally separated from Him) but we knowing He is reject Him and the knowledge of Him and DECIDE to walk as the lord of our own life (as a god unto ourself).

Salvation is not an adjustment or new phase added to us, it is the solution to the problem WE allowed to be despite all His attempts to instruct us and guide us (bit we would not so we are all without excuse…cannot say “the devil made me do it” or “Well God made me like this”).

But why would God having foreknown the problem from the beginning already have set up the solution? Because He loves us and wants us to love Him!

Then why did He just not create us unable to sin in the first place? Because for love to be genuine the option to love MUST be present with the option not to, otherwise we are just Calvin’s puppets on a string where every thought, temptation, action and deed, are already caused and irresistibly predetermined every moment of our lives by God.

a) That would not be Him loving us, nor

b) Us being able to love Him

 

[Barbarian]

Romans 5:14 But death reigned from Adam unto Moses, even over them also who have not sinned after the similitude of the transgression of Adam, who is a figure of him who was to come. [15] But not as the offence, so also the gift. For if by the offence of one, many died; much more the grace of God, and the gift, by the grace of one man, Jesus Christ, hath abounded unto many.
[16] And not as it was by one sin, so also is the gift. For judgment indeed was by one unto condemnation; but grace is of many offences, unto justification. [17] For if by one man' s offence death reigned through one; much more they who receive abundance of grace, and of the gift, and of justice, shall reign in life through one, Jesus Christ. [18] Therefore, as by the offence of one, unto all men to condemnation; so also by the justice of one, unto all men to justification of life. [19] For as by the disobedience of one man, many were made sinners; so also by the obedience of one, many shall be made just.

(my emphasis, in red)

 

[brother Paul]

The wages of sin being death, and knowing that the soul that sins IT shall die...read and include the following in ones assessment

Deuteronomy 24:16

The fathers shall not be put to death for the children, neither shall the children be put to death for the fathers: every man shall be put to death for his own sin.

Ezekiel 18:20

The soul that sins, it shall die. The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son: the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him.

Adam was one of our fathers until we are placed IN CHRIST (the second Adam) by the Spirit....

 

[Barbarian]

Numbers 14:18 The Lord is patient and full of mercy, taking away iniquity and wickedness, and leaving no man clear, who visitest the sins of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation.

 

[brother Paul]

Yeas this passage in Numbers says “YHVH is slow to anger, and plenteous in lovingkindness, forgiving iniquity and transgression, and that will by no means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, upon the third and upon the fourth generation.”

And it is a paraphrase of Exodus 20:5, 6 which says “you shall not bow down unto them, nor serve them (referring to false idols); for I, YHVH thy God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate Me; and showing mercy unto the thousandth generation of them that love Me and keep My commandments.”

The Hebrew word ‘avon used here means the perversity or depravity not punishment due. It refers to the modeling of the parents as effectual in the upbringing of children and does not speak to a state of being at their birth. Secondly there is a qualifier. This only is the case with those generations that never come to love Him and obey Him (they in fact hate Him).