The AP Model and Shannon Theory Show the Incompleteness of Darwin’s ToE

self | January 26, 2009 | Jean F. Drew

[betty boop]

The AP Model and Shannon Theory Show the Incompleteness of Darwin’s ToE

By Jean F. Drew

“The commonly cited case for intelligent design appeals to: (a) the irreducible complexity of (b) some aspects of life. But complex arguments invite complex refutations (valid or otherwise), and the claim that only some aspects of life are irreducibly complex implies that others are not, and so the average person remains unconvinced. Here I use another principle—autopoiesis (self-making)—to show that all aspects of life lie beyond the reach of naturalistic explanations. Autopoiesis provides a compelling case for intelligent design in three stages: (i) autopoiesis is universal in all living things, which makes it a pre-requisite for life, not an end product of natural selection; (ii) the inversely-causal, information-driven, structured hierarchy of autopoiesis is not reducible to the laws of physics and chemistry; and (iii) there is an unbridgeable abyss between the dirty, mass-action chemistry of the natural environmental and the perfectly-pure, single-molecule precision of biochemistry.”

So begins Alex Williams’ seminal article, Life’s Irreducible Structure — Autopoiesis, Part 1. In the article, Williams seeks to show that all living organisms are constituted by a five-level structured hierarchy that cannot be wholly accounted for in terms of naturalistic explanation. Rather, Williams’ model places primary emphasis on the successful transmission and communication of relevant biological information.

Note here that, so far, science has not identified any naturalistic source for “information” within the universe, biological or otherwise. And yet it appears that living organisms remain living only so long as they are “successfully communicating” information. When that process stops, the organism dies; i.e., becomes subject to the second law of thermodynamics — the consequences of which the now-deceased organism had managed to optimally distance itself from while alive.

Evidently Williams finds Michael Behe’s irreducible complexity arguments insufficiently general to explain biological complexity and organization, and so seeks a different explanation to generically characterize the living organism. Yet his proposed autopoietic model — of the “self-making,” i.e., self-maintaining or self-organizing and therefore living system — itself happens to be irreducibly complex. That is to say, on Williams’ model, any biological organism from microbe to man must be understood as a complete, functioning “whole,” transcending in the most profound way any definition of a particular organism as the “mere” sum of its constituting “material” parts.

Further, the idea of the “whole” must come prior to an understanding of the nature and function of the constituting parts. Williams terms this idea of the “whole” as inversely causal meta-information; as such, it is what determines the relations and organization of all the parts that constitute that “whole” of the living organism — a biological system in nature.

Just one further word before we turn to Williams’ autopoietic model. To begin with the supposition of “wholeness” flies in the face of methodological naturalism, the currently favored model of scientific investigation, and arguably the heart of Darwinist evolutionary theory. For methodological naturalism is classical and mechanistic (i.e., “Newtonian”) in its basic presuppositions: Among other things, it requires that all causation be “local.” Given this requirement, it makes sense to regard the “whole is merely the sum of its parts” as a valid statement — those parts being given to human understanding as the objects of direct observation of material events. The presumption here is that, given enough time, the piling up of the parts (i.e., of the “material events”) will eventually give you the description of the whole. Meanwhile, we all should just be patient. For centuries if need be, as a collaborator once suggested to me (in regard to abiogenesis. See more below).

Yet subsequent to classical physics came the astonishing revelations of relativity and quantum theory, both of which point to “non-local” causation. The transmission of information across widely spatially-separated regions (from the point of view of the biological organism as an extended body in time) so as to have causative effect in the emergence of biological life and its functions is decidedly a “non-local” phenomenon. Indeed, non-local causation seems ubiquitous, all-pervasive in the living state of biological organisms, as we shall see in what follows.

Williams’ Autopoietic Model
Williams lays out the five-level, autopoietic hierarchy specifying the living system this way (parenthetical notes added):

(i) components with perfectly pure composition (i.e., pure elements)
(ii) components with highly specific structure (i.e., molecules)
(iii) components that are functionally integrated (i.e., components work cooperatively toward achieving a purpose or goal)
(iv) comprehensively regulated information-driven processes (DNA, RNA)
(v) inversely-causal meta-informational strategies for individual and species survival (we’ll get to this in a minute)

Pictorially, the model lays out like this:

Figure 1 summarizes the five-level, hierarchical specification of any living organism, microbe to man. But how do we get a handle on what this hierarchy actually means?

An interesting way to look at the problem, it seems to me, is to look at the available potential “information content” of each of the five “levels” or “manifolds” of the hierarchy.

You’ll note that Figure 1 depicts an ascending arrow on the left labeled “complexity.” For our present purposes, we’ll define this as “algorithmic complexity,” understood as a function that maximally yields “information content.” If we can find complexity measures to plug into the model, we might gain additional insight thereby.

Fortunately, algorithmic complexity measures have been obtained for certain levels of the hierarchy; i.e., Level (i) and Levels (iv) and possibly Level (v). For the latter two, the measures were taken with respect to the living human being. Figure 1 can thus be expanded as follows:

Notes to Figure 2:

¹ Gregory Chaitin: “My paper on physics was never published, only as an IBM report. In it I took: Newton’s laws, Maxwell’s laws, the Schrödinger equation, and Einstein’s field equations for curved spacetime near a black hole, and solved them numerically, giving ‘motion-picture’ solutions. The programs, which were written in an obsolete computer programming language APL2 at roughly the level of Mathematica, were all about half a page long, which is amazingly simple.”

On this basis, Chaitin has pointed out that the complexity we observe in living systems cannot be accounted for on the basis of the chemical and physical laws alone, owing to the paucity of their information content.

² George Gilder: “In each of the some 300 trillion cells in every human body, the words of life churn almost flawlessly through our flesh and nervous system at a speed that utterly dwarfs the data rates of all the world’s supercomputers. For example, just to assemble some 500 amino-acid units into each of the trillions of complex hemoglobin molecules that transfer oxygen from the lungs to bodily tissues takes a total of some 250 peta operations per second. (The word “peta” refers to the number ten to the 15th power — so this tiny process requires 250 x 10¹⁵ operations.)

A Word about Abiogenesis
Darwin’s evolutionary theory does not deal with the origin of life. It takes life for granted, and then asks how it speciates. Moreover, the theory does not elaborate a description of the constitution of the individual living organism, such as Williams’ irreducibly complex/autopoietic (“IC/AP”) model proposes.

It’s important to recognize that neither Darwin’s theory, nor Williams’ model, deals with the origin of life. It seems to me that evolution theory and ID are not necessarily mutually-exclusive. One deals with the species level, the other the biological structure of living individuals, the “building blocks” of species, as it were.

Yet there is tremendous hostility towards intelligent design on the part of many orthodox evolutionary biologists, which has gotten so bad in recent times that the more doctrinaire Darwinists have run to the courts for “protection” of their cherished beliefs (and interests personal and institutional), insisting that ID “is not science.” Judges are not scientists; in general they are ill-equipped to make judgments “on the merits” of scientific controversies. Yet they render judgments all the same, with profound implications for how science is to be taught. I fail to see how this redounds to the benefit of scientific progress.

If science is defined as materialist and naturalist in its fundamental presuppositions — the currently-favored methodological naturalism — then ID does not meet the test of “what is science?” For it does not restrict itself to the material, the physical, but extends its model to information science, which is immaterial. The problem for Darwinists seems to be that there is no known source of biological information within Nature as classically understood (i.e., as fundamentally Newtonian — materialist and mechanistic in three dimensions).

The problem of abiogenesis goes straight to the heart of this issue. Abiogensis is a hypothesis holding that life spontaneously arises from inert, non-living matter under as-yet unknown conditions. Although evolution theory does not deal with the problem of the origin of life, many evolutionary biologists are intrigued by the problem, and want to deal with it in a manner consistent with Darwinian methods; i.e., the presuppositions of methodological naturalism, boosted by random mutation and natural selection. That is, to assume that life “emerges” from the “bottom-up” — from resources available at Levels (i) and (ii) of the IC/AP model.

There have been numerous experiments, most of which have taken the form of laboratory simulations of “lightning strikes” on a properly prepared chemical “soup” (e.g., Urey, Miller, et al.). At least one such experiment managed to produce amino acids — fundamental building blocks of life (at the (ii) level of Williams’ hierarchy). But amino acids are not life. On Williams’ model, to be “life,” they’d need to have achieved at least the threshold of Level (iii).

For it is the presence of “functionally-integrated components” that makes life possible, that sustains the living organism in its very first “duty”: That it will, along the entire extension of its complete biological make-up (whether simple or highly complex), globally organize its component systems in such a way as to maximally maintain the total organism’s “distance” from thermodynamic entropy. An “organism” that couldn’t do that wouldn’t last as an “organism” for very long.

And so in order for the materialist interpretation of abiogenesis to be true, the “chemical soup” experimental model would have to demonstrate how inorganic matter manages to “exempt” itself from one of the two most fundamental laws of Nature: the second law of thermodynamics.

From cells on up through species, all biological organisms — by virtue of their participation in Levels (i) and (ii) — are subject to the second law right from creation. Indeed, they are subject to it throughout their life spans. A friend points out that the second law is a big arguing point for Macroevolutionists, who try to argue that the second law is irrelevent, i.e., doesn’t apply to living systems, because “it only applies to closed systems and not to open ones.” Thus they say that living systems in nature are “open” systems. But what this line of reasoning does not tell us is what such systems are “open” to.

And yet we know that every cell is subject to the second law — simply by needing to fuel itself, it subjects itself to the effects of entropy, otherwise known as heat death. And although it can and does stave off such effects for a while, doing so requires the cell or species constantly to deal with maintaining distance from entropy in all its living functional components, organized globally. Entropy plays a big part in all life — from cells to completed species.

When the successful communication of meta-information begins to slow down and break down, cells and species then begin to succumb to the effects of entropy, to which they have been subjected all their entire life. This is because they can no longer combat, or stay ahead of the “entropy curve,” due to inefficient communication processes and, thus, degradation of the maintenance procedures communicated to the cells via the meta-information system that is specific to each particular biological entity and to each particular species. After all, any species description is necessarily an informed description.

Yet another origin-of-life approach — the Wimmer abiogenesis experiment — is highly instructive. He managed to “create” a polio virus. He did so by introducing RNA information into a “cell-free juice,” and the polio virus spontaneously resulted.

Wimmer used actual DNA to synthesize polio RNA based on information about the polio virus RNA which is widely available, even on the internet. The RNA information was truly “pulled” from the DNA, which “resides” at the next-higher level. He could not synthesize RNA directly; he first had to synthesize the DNA from the raw information and then synthesize the polio RNA from the synthetic DNA.

Yet RNA information, like all information, is immaterial. In terms of the Williams’ hierarchy, clearly Wimmer had obtained an organism functioning at about Level (iii) — because it had sufficient information to propel it to that level, as “pulled” by the information available at the next-higher level where DNA information “resides” — Level (iv).

Unlike biological organisms expressing all five levels of the Williams model, the polio virus, though fully autonomous as an information processor (leading to its “successful communication” in Wimmer’s laboratory), somehow still doesn’t have everything it needs to be fully “autonomous” as a living being. A virus, for instance, is dependent on a living host in order to execute its own life program. As such, it is a sort of “quasi-life.” Shannon Information Theory helps us to clarify such distinctions.

Before we turn to Shannon, it’s worth mentioning that, according to H. H. Pattee and Luis Rocha, the issue of autonomy (and semiosis — the language and the ability to encode/decode messages) is a huge stumbling block to abiogenesis theory. For that kind of complexity to emerge by self-organizing theory, in the RNA world, the organism would have to involuntarily toggle back and forth between non-autonomous and autonomous modes, first to gather, and then to make use of information content as an autonomous living entity. The question then becomes: What tells it how and when to “toggle?” Further, it appears the source of the information content that can toggle non-life into life remains undisclosed.

Shannon Information Theory
The DNA of any individual life form is exactly the same whether the organism is dead or alive. And we know this, for DNA is widely used and proved reliable in forensic tests of decedents in criminal courts of law. And so we propose:

Information is that which distinguishes life from non-life/death.

Information, paraphrased as “successful communication,” is the reduction of uncertainty (Shannon entropy) in a receiver or molecular machine in going from a before state to an after state. It is the action which facilitates any successfully completed communication. Thus Shannon’s model describes the universal “mechanism” of communication. That is, it distinguishes between the “content” of a message and its “conduit”: The model is indifferent to the actual message being communicated, which could be anything, from “Don’t forget to put your boots on today — it’s snowing,” to Shakespeare’s Hamlet. The value or meaning of the message being transmitted has no bearing on the Shannon model, which is the same for all messages whatever. Pictorially, the Shannon communication conduit looks like this:

Information is further defined by its independence from physical determination:

“I came to see that the computer offers an insuperable obstacle to Darwinian materialism. In a computer, as information theory shows, the content is manifestly independent of its material substrate. No possible knowledge of a computer’s materials can yield any information whatsoever about the actual content of its computations. In the usual hierarchy of causation, they reflect the software or ‘source code’ used to program the device; and, like the design of the computer itself, the software is contrived by human intelligence.

“The failure of purely physical theories to describe or explain information reflects Shannon’s concept of entropy and his measure of ‘news.’ Information is defined by its independence from physical determination: If it is determined, it is predictable and thus by definition not information. Yet Darwinian science seemed to be reducing all nature to material causes.” — George Gilder, “Evolution and Me,” National Review, July 17, 2006, p. 29f.

Referring to the Shannon diagram above, we can interpret the various elements of the model in terms of biological utility, as follows:

Note the head, “noise.” Biologically speaking, with respect to the fully-integrated, five-leveled biological organism, “noise” in the channel might be introduced by certain biological “enigmas,” which broadly satisfy the requirements of Williams’ model and, thus, are living organisms. Shannon Information Theory describes such “enigmas” as follows:

Bacteria — typified by autonomous successful communication; bacteria are single-cell organisms. Because they are autonomous entities, communications follow the normal flow in Shannon theory — source, message, encoder/transmitter, channel, decoder/receiver. The bacteria’s messages are not “broadcast” to other nearby bacteria but are autonomous to the single-cell organism.

Bacterial Spores — typified by autonomous successful communication. Bacterial spores, such as anthrax, are like other bacteria except they can settle into a dormant state. Dormant bacterial spores begin regular successful communication under the Shannon model once an “interrupt” has occurred, for instance the presence of food. Anthrax, for instance, may lay dormant for years until breathed into a victim’s lungs, whereupon it actively begins its successful albeit destructive (to its host) communication, which often leads to the death of its host; i.e., the bacterium’s “food source.”

Mycoplasmas — typified as an autonomous bacterial model parasite successfully communicating. Mycoplasmas are akin to bacteria except they lack an outer membrane and so often attach to other cells, whereby they may cause such events as, for instance, the disease pneumonia. In the Shannon model, mycoplasmas are considered “autonomous” in that the communications are often restricted to the mycoplasma itself; e.g., self-reproduction. But because they also act like a parasite, they might alter the host’s properties and thus result in malfunctions in the autonomous communication of the host by, for instance, interfering with the channel.

Mimivirus — typified as an autonomous virus model parasite successfully communicating. Mimiviruses are gigantic viruses. They are viruses because they are parasites to their host, relying on the host for protein engineering. But the mimiviruses (unlike regular viruses) apparently do not need to be a parasite, and thus they are “autonomous” with regard to the Shannon model. But like the mycoplasmas, the presence of mimiviruses can alter properties of the host and thereby result in malfunctions in the autonomous communications of the host by, for instance, interfering with the channel.

Viroids — typified as non-autonomous virus-like noise/mutation contributing to successful/failed communication. Viroids have no protein coat. They are single strands of RNA that lack the protein coat of regular viruses. They are noise in the channel under the Shannon model; i.e., messages only that are not communicated autonomously within the viroids themselves. They can also be seen as “broadcast” messages, because viroids may cause their own message (RNA) to be introduced into the host.

Viruses — typified as non-autonomous virus noise/mutation contributing to successful/failed communication. Viruses feed genetic data to the host. They are strands of DNA or RNA that have a protein coat. Viruses are parasites to the host, relying on the host for communication; e.g., reproduction. In the Shannon model, viruses are either noise or broadcasts that are not autonomous in the virus and appear as noise messages to the host. It is possible that, unlike the polio virus which is destructive, there may be some viruses (and viroids) whose messages cause a beneficial adaptation in the host.

Prions — typified as non-autonomous protein noise/mutation contributing to successful/failed communication (protein crystallization). Prions are protein molecules that have neither DNA nor RNA. Currently, prions are the suspected cause of bovine spongiform encephalopathy — Mad Cow Disease. In the Shannon model, prions would be incoherent in the channel because they have no discernable message; that is, neither DNA nor RNA. Thus the prion would lead to channel or decoding malfunctions.

So far there is no known origin for information (successful communication) in space/time. This should be visualized as activity represented by the arrows on the above illustration. Possible origins include a universal vacuum field, harmonics, geometry.

Shannon’s mathematical theory of communications applied to molecular biology shows genuine promise of having some significant implications for the theory of natural selection in explaining the rise of information (successful communication), autonomy, and semiosis (language, encoding/decoding). — S. Venable, J. Drew, “Shannon Information and Complex Systems Theory,” Don’t Let Science Get You Down, Timothy, Lulu Press, 2006, p. 207f.

It seems worthwhile to note here that, under Shannon’s model, the thermodynamic “tab” is paid when the “molecular machine” goes from the before state to the after state. At that moment, it dissipates heat into the surroundings. Level (v) meta-information successfully communicated to the organism provides it with strategies to counter and compensate for local thermodynamic effects. Ultimately, when the organism reaches a state in which it is no longer successfully communicating, the entropy tab must be paid by ordinary means. And so eventually, the living organism dies.

Putting Williams’ IC/AP Model into Context
So far, the autopoietic model — though it provides an excellent description of the information flows necessary to establish and maintain an organism in a “living state” — seems to be a bit of an abstraction. Indeed, in order to be fully understood, the model needs to be placed into the context in which it occurs — that is, in Nature.

Each living entity as described by the model is a part and participant in a far greater “whole.” Niels Bohr put it this way: “A scientific analysis of parts cannot disclose the actual character of a living organism because that organism exists only in relation to the whole of biological life.” Including the species-specific meta-information unique to any particular species, which also controls and dictates how the entire biological system works as a “whole”; i.e., at the global level. And arguably, not only in relation to the entirety of biological life, but to the physical forces of nature, to inorganic entities, and to other biological beings, including the “enigmas” described above, which appear to be a sort of “quasi-life.” For even though they may be autonomous communicators, some of these “quasi-life” examples suggest an organic state that is somehow not “sufficiently informed” to stand on its own; i.e., they exemplify a state that needs to latch onto a fully-functioning biological entity in order to complete their own “program” for life — the very definition of a parasite.

The single most telling point that Williams’ model makes is that information is vital to the living state; that it flows “downward” from the “top” of his model — Level (v), meta-information — and not from the “bottom” of the model flowing “upwards” by the incremental means characterizing Levels (i) and (ii) — not to mention orthodox Darwinist expectation. On this model, Levels (i) and (ii) “do not know how to fit themselves” into the “biological picture.” For that, they need the information available at Levels (iii) to (v).

Many questions relevant to our exploration of the fundaments of biology have not been touched on in this article — e.g., what is the meaning of “emergence?” What is the manner in which “complexification” takes place in nature? What do we mean by “open” and “closed” systems? What do we mean by “self-ordered” or “self-organizing” systems in nature? (And what does the prefix “self” mean with respect to such questions?)

But since we’re out of time, we won’t be dealing with such problems here and now, though I hope we may return to them later. Instead, I’ll leave you, dear reader, with yet another depiction of Figure 1, this time elaborated to show the total context in which the irreducibly complex, autopoietic model is embedded:

Note the model now sits, not only with respect to its natural environment, but also with respect to the quantum domain of pure potentiality, and also with respect to a (proposed) extra-mundane source of biological information.

I think for the biological sciences to actually progress, a model such as Williams’ IC/AP model is worthy of serious consideration. Remember, Darwin’s theory is wholly classical, meaning dimensionally limited to 3-space, to local, mechanical, largely force-field-driven material causation. Relativity and quantum theory have both moved well beyond those precincts. It’s time for the Darwinian theory of evolution to “catch up” with the current state of scientific knowledge — and especially with the implications of information science.

©2009 Jean F. Drew

[CottShop]

[[but I think you are going to be disappointed if you think natural processes cannot evolve life. ]]

I don’t beleive we are at all- and let’s not forget, that the tests done so far involve intelligent manipulation with hte creators taking oi nthe roles of metainfo BEFORE any such ‘creations’ take place- but I think this point does need to be examined and discussed both here and in the lab.

Simple code being worked out from higher code changes isn’t exactly the same hting as code just arising au natural, but if you have an argument to propose that might indicate it could, I’d be interested in seeing it— and I’m talking purely natural, none of htis controlled, protected, intelligently designed stuff- not impressed with htose type experiments

[[A few years ago there were few young people willing to risk their careers on this area of research, but it is heating up.]]

I’ve seen you make htis statement a few times nowe- got any links to such bold experiments?

[CottShop]

[[They live until they are killed, or until the environment becomes unsupportive.]]

One hting that just struck me- we nkowe this how? How is it we know they are ‘eternal’ unless killed?

[Diamond]

This may be true is some idealized world,

It is not merely true in some idealized world, it is a fact supported by ALL observations in the real world to date. There are no counterexamples of a code, where the origin of the code is known, arising from a purely naturalistic source.

...but chemistry includes all kinds of possibilities for evolving codes and code readers without outside intervention.chemistry includes all kinds of possibilities for evolving codes and code readers without outside intervention.

Such as?

How does chemistry get chemistry to represent something other than itself?

Cordially,

[CottShop]

That’s what I’m wondering myself diamond. I know Demski thinks life might get information from nature, but everythign I’ve read abotu that is woefully innadequate when it comes to building a complex metainformaiton, and quite frankly, ‘taking cues from nature’ (such as ‘lava is hot- avoid at all costs) can NOT influence genetic code, but can ONLY contribute to survival of those species ‘smart’ enough to avoid lava flows.

There is soem reasearch that I know of that looks into RNA being the ‘beginning of life’ however, the lab experiments being done that proposed they ‘created life’ did NOT infact create life, al lthey created was an intelligently designed, controlled, intelligently selected for, and intelligently protected and directed experiment with designer RNA that does NOT reflect natural processes at all. All the experiemnt showed was the NEED for an intelligent designer guiding hte process super-naturally.

If there are other ‘bold studies’ beign performed looking into an alleged naturalistic rise of information, and not just some manipulaiton of informaiton already present at highly complex levels, I am unaware of those experiments, and liek you say- simple manipulation of chemical code only leads to more chemical arrangements, not biological arrangements. Nature can only work within the parameters of what’s available to it, it can NOT create somethign that isn’t specific to a ‘species’ or arrangments simply by changing code within the guidelines of the infromation available to it. For the kind of macroevolutionary change to occure, you MUST introduce foreign information from a higher source, but nowhere do we find any eveidnece of that happening in nature, and infact, species have several built in, designed, protection levels to prevent this from occuring except in ‘simple’ bacteria which incidently STILL remain bacteria even htough they experience simplistic lateral gene transference from other bacteria of it’s own kind

[Alamo-Girl]

How is it we know they are ‘eternal’ unless killed?

The amoeba are not eternal. They are traveling a worldline in space/time like we are. They are time and space bound.

If something or someone doesn't kill a particular amoeba first, then it will surely not survive the "death" of this planet or solar system or galaxy or universe.

The only remarkable thing is that the amoeba is a living organism not programmed to die (age "naturally" - e.g. apoptosis.)

And, in my view, the more interesting question is how and/or why the higher organisms are programmed to die. In evolution theory, how would "nature" select in favor of death by trial and error? What is the survival advantage of death?

To the Christian who "does" or at least follows science, the observation might underscore a spiritual understanding, i.e. that death was added after the fact of life, whether biological or spiritual.

Of course if and how a Christian would see this would depend on whether he understands the following passage to speak of physical death or spiritual death - or both - and whether he views the first four chapters of Scripture as written from the Creator's perspective or the creature's perspective, e.g. whether Eden was spiritual, physical or both - whether Adam was made in the spiritual realm or the physical realm or both.

Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned: - Romans 5:12

In my view, Eden is preeminently in the spiritual realm. Note the tree of life is in the center of the garden of Eden, the center of Paradise:

And out of the ground made the LORD God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. - Genesis 2:9

He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches; To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God. - Revelation 2:7

However - like other spiritual realm things - temple, Holy mountain, ark - there may also be a physical type or congruence, e.g. that a Christian is dead and alive with Christ in God (Colossians 3:3)

For me, the observation points to the harmony between God's revelation in Scripture and in Creation (spiritual and physical:)

For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God. For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected [the same] in hope, Because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. - Romans 8:19-21

To God be the glory!

[Alamo-Girl]

Oops. That should be first three chapters of Genesis, not first four chapters.

[CottShop]

[[And, in my view, the more interesting question is how and/or why the higher organisms are programmed to die. In evolution theory, how would “nature” select in favor of death by trial and error? What is the survival advantage of death?]]

Precisely- very good point- however, I think the coutnerargument will be that there had to be a ‘tradeoff’ between long life and reproduction- however, if hte amoeba were perfectly fine livng htier life merrily, and livign for very long times, it woudl seem that there woudl be nothign that would ‘push htem’ toward the ‘need to evovle’

But the coutnerargument will be that certain colonies of amoeba were pressured to ‘adapt or die’ and even htough other colonies in other parts of hte world were htriving, these particular amoeba had to adapt- and so on and so forth for billions of years until we got billions of species that all apparently evovled from lower species that simply couldn’t make a go of it in their particular environments and ‘needed to evolve’ to a higher species and compelxity.

[[To the Christian who “does” or at least follows science, the observation might underscore a spiritual understanding, i.e. that death was added after the fact of life, whether biological or spiritual. ]]

I was goign to mention this earlier- that it could be argued that the amoeba that live very long were carry-overs from the original creation where life was supposed to live eternal- all species.

[CottShop]

[[Oops. That should be first three chapters of Genesis, not first four chapters.]]

Ahh ahh you said first 4 so I’m holding you too it- Busted! Now you’re backpeddling- ahhh ahhh got ya-— you said the first 4- you can’t retract— you said hte first 4 first— No takie backies— caught saying somethign that wasn’t true-— ahhh ahhh

Beleive it or not, I’ve had peopel ‘argue’ like htis against me when I made mistakes lol

[betty boop]

The amoeba are not eternal. They are traveling a worldline in space/time like we are. They are time and space bound.....

...the more interesting question is how and/or why the higher organisms are programmed to die. In evolution theory, how would "nature" select in favor of death by trial and error? What is the survival advantage of death?

Marvelous insights, dearest sister in Christ! As for this interesting question, it certainly creates an interesting paradox for orthodox ToE.

Thank you ever so much for this superb essay/post!

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so much for sharing your insights, dear CottShop!

however, I think the coutnerargument will be that there had to be a ‘tradeoff’ between long life and reproduction

And yet the amoeba also replicate themselves.

But the coutnerargument will be that certain colonies of amoeba were pressured to ‘adapt or die’ and even htough other colonies in other parts of hte world were htriving, these particular amoeba had to adapt- and so on and so forth for billions of years until we got billions of species that all apparently evovled from lower species that simply couldn’t make a go of it in their particular environments and ‘needed to evolve’ to a higher species and compelxity.

Indeed, that is what I find puzzling about "programmed cell death."

It is understandable that in the presence of an inadequate food supply, a balance will result. Some will die from starvation until the balance is acheived.

And it is reasonable that some organisms might "kill off" competing organisms to survive.

But it is puzzling that an undirected process, natural selection, would lead to "programmed cell death."

[Alamo-Girl]

LOLOLOL! So have I, dear CottShop.

Count it all joy. A person doesn't resort to spitwads when he has ammunition.

[Alamo-Girl]

And thank you oh so very much for your encouragements, dearest sister in Christ!

[betty boop]

And at the very bottom of the abiogenesis ladder is the issue of where autonomy came from in the first place. At that theoretical level it is all a “soup.” Any message sent in its direction would be a broadcast to the soup. Things would have to become autonomous within that theoretical soup for successful communications to occur as we observe it today – otherwise there would still only be that theoretical soup.

What a marvelous exchange between you and CottShop, dearest sister in Christ! Thank you for this superlative essay-post! It's definitely a "keeper."

BTW, your observation that inversely-causal information involves temporal non-locality is spot-on, IMHO FWIW.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so very much for your encouragements, especially with regard to temporal non-locality!

As you know so well, I am rather focused on the math, the geometry. LOLOL!

[js1138]

How does chemistry get chemistry to represent something other than itself?

The question is whether chemistry can produce self-replicators that evolve. This can be settled by experimentation.

You can't prove that something can't happen by defining it as impossible.

[lakey]

A “bump” to let you two brilliant ladies know that you are keeping me awake.

[TXnMA]

A-G wrote: "..the more interesting question is how and/or why the higher organisms are programmed to die."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

My ol' chemistry prof used to give a lecture entitled "The Old Gray Mare", in which he traced the full life cycle of a horse. At the end, the horse died, and her carcass fed the coyotes, buzzards, ants, etc., then it degraded into soil to feed the nematodes, earthworms, etc. -- and decomposed into nutrients to fertilize the grass and oats that grew near where it died -- to feed the next generation of horses.

Truly, without physical death, there could be no continuity of life. For one thing, if procreation were not curtailed, the earth would soon be overpopulated and the eventual result would be -- death...

As dependent as we are upon fossil fuels, I feel it should be obvious that God's providential for living things includes the provision for death.

It is only man's ("in the image of God") soul/spirit that can (through the provision and Grace of our Saviour) branch to "exit the loop" -- and escape our programmed death.

[CottShop]

[[But it is puzzling that an undirected process, natural selection, would lead to “programmed cell death.”]]

Especially when it comes to trying to get that programmed death from chemical arrangements.

I also find it odd that supposedly, DNA/RNA supposedly arose, yet in order to do so, there would have to be billions of mistakes witnessed in species- many billions- trillions perhaps, yet all we find are compelted codes in optimum working order (well, not really optimimum- what we find is that when tracign mTDNA back it gets puerer and purer- just hte oppositie for what Macroevolution would have doen if tryign to ‘perfect’ DNA, and it’s fully inline with hte biblical account where man and woman were created optimum, and degraded over time)

It does however seem odd that a species which lives a very long time, woudl then ‘feel the need’ to evolve programmed cell death to such a drastic shortneing of life. If nothign but propogation of the species’ is what drives species ‘evolving’. then it woudl seem that something that is more optimimum, somethign that lives a very very long time, would be quite fit, and htus ‘wish’ to pass along it’s gene code for as long as possible instead of ‘feeling the need’ to evolve programmed cell death

The development of instincts in species also seems to be at odds with chemical to man macroevolution- while it might be claiemd and hsown that thinking species, reacting species can react to environmental cues in order to learn from, and protect the species- it can’t be argued that simple chemical arrangements are capable of that, Yet we’re to beleive that rapid adaption resulted from chemicals all ythe way up to man. Either nature is forward looking, and capable of anticipating problems related to species surivival, or soem true intelligence forknew and anticipated and designed fully functional metainfo to adjust on the fly as needed

[Alamo-Girl]

LOLOL! (I hope you mean that as a good thing...)

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so very much for sharing your insights and testimony, dear brother in Christ!

It is only man's ("in the image of God") soul/spirit that can (through the provision and Grace of our Saviour) branch to "exit the loop" -- and escape our programmed death.

Amen. Praise God!!!