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I think Alex Williams gets right to the heart of the matter when he points out where materialist, reductionist science misses the boat:

“Shannon information theory deliberately ignores the meaning of the information and only deals with the statistics of the code. It is thus more than useless in biology (where meaning is central) because it diverts attention away from meaning.”

Actually, I think Alex Williams misses the boat when he speaks this way about Claud Shannon's Mathematical Theory of Communications.

It is true that the meaning of the message is completely irrelevant to Shannon's theory. The theory is applicable whether the message is DNA, Hamlet, video, a key depressed on your keyboard, a mouse click, data in your data base, an image to print - or whatever.

Universality is the elegance of mathematics. The presence of a variable in a formula (e.g. circumference to pi) testifies to its universality. Indeed, to me the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics is like God's copyright notice on the cosmos.

The 'statistics' of the code - or the measure of a received message is a bit (which has evolved to mean binary, but it can also be a real number btw.) And it certainly is not the only thing Shannon's theory deals with.

The message itself, the encoding and decoding, the channel, the noise, the sender and receiver are elements of the model.

The model is about communications!

And it is hardly useless in biology. It has been effectively used in cancer and pharmaceutical research. And we can see the relevance to researchers in Wimmer's experiment - the successful communication of the message (polio RNA.) And we see it center stage in Szostak's abiogenesis experiments as well as he tries to prod communications in non-life.

Of course Alex William's interest - and ours on this thread - is in the meaning of the message! But we should not consider Shannon to be a diversion but rather the mathematical model for communicating the message which has meaning in the AP model.

In any dimensionality of space/time which contains only one dimension of time - there is no conceivable local unaware and non-intelligent origin for a message which anticipates that which has not yet occurred, e.g. the need for maintenance or repair.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize this "inversely causal" - or "temporally non-local" - information content suggests an intelligent cause. The lower level in the AP Model hierarchy has no awareness at all to anticipate anything - no intelligence as sender or receiver.

Let's not throw this baby out with the bathwater. After all, it’s the Shannon model of communications that underscores the receiver must be prepared to receive the message and that there must be a sender for every message. And in this case, the model itself suggests the send must either not be bound to an arrow of time (God) or else the sender must be intelligent enough to create a receiver, anticipate and inform (panspermia.)

Either way, it is not an undirected process.

To Christians, Alex Williams' model can be exhilarating. We know – Spiritually – that God spoke everything into being:

By the word of the LORD were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth. – Psalms 33:6

So let’s not throw out the math because it happens to be universal. After all, the root Greek word for Word (Jesus Christ) is Logos, the same root word for logic.

In the beginning was the Word [Logos], and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life; and the life was the light of men. – John 1:1-4

To God be the glory!

In any dimensionality of space/time which contains only one dimension of time - there is no conceivable local unaware and non-intelligent origin for a message which anticipates that which has not yet occurred, e.g. the need for maintenance or repair.

Great observation, dearest sister in Christ! Which is why I'm so open to Wesson's proposal of a fifth "time-like" dimension to constitute a three-space, two-time model....

Moreover, it seems to me that Feynmann''s path integral formalism — widely used in physics, and now in biology — would need a fifth temporal dimension to account for all the "instantaneous" — i.e., superluminal — virtual particle histories that are summed to give a precise result regarding the current state of the real particle....

Inadequate conceptions of time seem to be a major problem for the natural sciences nowadays.

Thank you so very much for this excellent essay/post!

==Let’s not throw this baby out with the bathwater. After all, it’s the Shannon model of communications that underscores the receiver must be prepared to receive the message and that there must be a sender for every message.

My intent was not to draw attention to Shannon. My intent was to draw attention to the fact that science is fundamentally about discovering meaning. For instance, while the statistics of information flow is important with respect to telecommunications, it is not nearly as important as the meaningful messages being communicated between senders and receivers that telecommunications facilitates. My point is that every aspect of the Universe is sending intelligable messages. The main job of science is to decipher the meaning of those messages. The statistics of the message is interesting, but the meaning of those messages is crucial. For scientists to pretend that the they are not engaged in the business of deciphering meaning reminds me of the people who duped a certain king into believing he was fully clothed.