[freedumb2003]

>>In my view, Darwin should have formally declared life as an axiom or postulate in his theory. Contentious disagreements have multiplied from inferences due to that omission. <<

And since I am having insomnia, I’ll go ahead and address this question (if’n you don’t mind).

Abiogenesis is no more a prerequisite to TToE (or any other biological science) than it is a prerequisite to Geology, Astronomy or any other life science. Darwin was not looking to the origins of the Universe, merely the origins of biology.

Because TToE is an emotional area, people feel that it has to qualify itself based on a different set of criteria than do other sciences. But, if the first question to a radioastronomer or geologist is not “but when and how did the Universe begin?” then it is equally irrelevant to demand an answer to that question of an anthropologist.

[Alamo-Girl]

Well, I don’t suffer from insomnia and had to call it a night before replying to your posts, dear Freedumb2003. Thank you for sharing your views!

But when asking the underlying question “how much data are needed to ascertain information?” there are no non-physical aspects.

Of course I disagree strongly. First, Shannon’s is a mathematical theory of communications. The message (the data), encoding, decoding, channel, receiver, sender and noise are all elements of successful communications. And the elements may indeed be physical, but the model does not require that they be physical.

The information itself is not physical but may be, and may be measurable in bits (which are not necessarily binary under Shannon’s model) providing the Shannon entropy is measurable.

In sum, information under Shannon is the reduction of uncertainty (Shannon entropy) in the receiver (or molecular machine) as it moves from a before state to an after state.

It is the action of a successful communication, not the message or data itself.

It doesn’t matter if the message is DNA, a punched card, combination of keystrokes, a letter in the mailbox, a folder in the file cabinet, a database, a record, DVD, spoken word, thought, radio, television or TV content and so on.

Likewise the channel, encoding or decoding are merely elements. As long as sender and receiver speak the same language, the receiver’s uncertainty can be reduced by successful communication. The channel might be the airways or a wire or the USPS and so on.

That letter in your mailbox does not become information under Shannon until your uncertainty is reduced, i.e. you become informed.

Information under the Shannon definition is not physical per se.

Likewise I am successfully communicating when I pray to God, and God of course is not physical, I am the sender, He is the receiver. The spiritual channel of my prayer is not physical. And when God communicates to me, e.g. that Jesus Christ is Lord, that also is not physical.

That is the big difference between the words of God and the words of men. The words of God are spirit and life. The words of men are neither spirit nor life.

It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, [they] are spirit, and [they] are life. – John 6:63

For instance, in the following passage, the people Jesus is addressing were physically hearing Him (pressure or sound waves) but they could not spiritually hear Him.

Why do ye not understand my speech? [even] because ye cannot hear my word. – John 8:43

But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know [them], because they are spiritually discerned. - I Corinthians 2:14

Of course to anyone who does not have “ears to hear” what I just wrote would be gibberish. LOLOL!

The Universe is made up of rules and those rules have result sets. The result sets are: known true, known false, unknown. If we set aside the first two, then we end up dealing with the unknowns (also known as null in a 3VL [3 value: {1,0,null}] analysis).

…

Bottom line: there are no non-physical causations and they can not be created out of whole cloth from argumentation

To the contrary, when one wishes to introduce the unknowable into the sets, he must expand from mathematics to metamathematics: Chaitin on the unknowable.

And there is great resistance to this among scientists who tend to be empiricists. Mathematics is only quasi-empirical.

For instance, the concept of infinity is very useful in mathematics but it doesn’t translate well to a finite universe.

Null is mathematically informative – and in cosmology particularly helpful in contrasting a zero dimensional singularity to the absence of space/time and physical causality itself. But to other disciplines of science, it may be altogether unacceptable – the closest concept some can embrace is a vacuum which also exists “in” space/time and is therefore subject to causality.

What is the end of the extension of one divided by three, or pi?

And so on.

In appreciating the physical world through the Spiritual eyes of a Christian, to recognize that God is The Creator, His Name is I AM and that Jesus is the Word of God, Logos – one expands his domain to glimpse the unknowable.

For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, [even] his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse: - Romans 1:20

To God be the glory! I must go now, but will try to catch up later.