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Perhaps distinguishing different types of senders and receivers can help clarify the issue.

Types of Sender and Receiver
(a) Intelligent Sender and Intelligent Receiver
Clearly intelligent sender/receiver pairs exist, such as people. The path between the sender and final target can, of course, involve intermediate sender/receiver pairs. In addition, the message can be received and re-coded in various manners, preserving all or most of the original intended information. Examples include the use of human translators or transmission across various media (voice radio waves tape recorder paper computer diskette).(b) Intelligent Sender and Non-Intelligent Receiver
Can an intelligent sender communicate with a non-intelligent receiver? Sure. Humans can interact with computers, for example. The sender transmits a database query and the result is sent back. The exchange can be interactive, such as working with a computer expert system. Of course the message encoding (computer language) and additional infrastructure (hardware and communications devices) needs to be set up in advance by an intelligent agent.(c) Non-Intelligent Sender and Intelligent Receiver
Can a non-intelligent sender/receiver pair or sequence of pairs occur? Certainly. Automated production equipment can rely on a controller, which sends messages to on-line measuring devices to ensure the process is running as desired and corrective action can be taken. Once again, this can only function if an intelligent agent, who knows the purpose of the system, sets up the whole arrangement. The sender must be able to monitor the environment and interpret some kind of a signal. The non-intelligent sender must then be able to automatically generate a message (e.g., ‘the pressure is rising’), which the receiver will be able to process (‘slow down the feed rate of X, increase the flow of cooling water, and send an alarm to Mrs Smith’).(d) Non-Intelligent Sender and Non-Intelligent Receiver
Now let’s consider an absolute extreme case. The sender and receiver can only react mechanically. Suppose the set-up must be fully automatic, meaning that when the sender or receiver is destroyed, a substitute has been provided for.
Compared to all the alternatives, this one requires the highest amount of intelligence from the agent who designed the system. Eventualities need to be anticipated and all resources for repair and energy need to be prepared in advanced. Do we find anything so enormously complex? Yes—it is called life!
Careful analysis shows again and again that the process: sender codes a message ® receiver decodes and uses the intended information, does not arise without the active involvement of a living intelligence at some point. This has been systematically analyzed by Professor Gitt who showed that coded information cannot arise by chance. Coded information obeys fundamental laws of nature, which in summarized form can be expressed as follows:^[72]
http://www.trueorigin.org/dawkinfo.asp

Cordially,

interesting article- funny htough, in it he declares Shannon’s model is ‘irrelevent’ to the discussion of creation evolution debate’ (Haven’t read through it yet, but will be interesting to see why- it would seem to me that there can be no message with out an intelligent designer designing it for both sender and receiver).

I see Dawkins is tryign to use hte model to argue agaisnt the designer.

truman says [[To understand how much information transfer between sender and receiver is occurring it would seem that what is encoded in the message alone is only part of the picture. There are cases where the receiver benefits from a multiplier effect when the transmitted information is augmented with existing knowledge on the part of the receiver.]]

Very interesting point. I think though the macroevolutionst/naturalist will then try to use htis ‘multiplier effect’ to mean that message alone could have arisen naturally’ because when you factor in multiplier effects, the simple message being sent could have numerous meanings for the receiver, and ‘given enough numerous meanings, then somethign resembling metainfo’ ‘could have arisen’ over millions of years, especially given the fact that mistakes in the genome change the message. (This is why I was not 100% satisfied that the arguments for naturally occuring metainfo were sufficiently dispelled in my earlier posts in the William’s article posted by GGG)

Will postm ore later tonight regarding Truman’s article

Thanks for posting the TrueOrigin article. I haven’t read it yet, but I most certainly will (especially since it delves into Shannon information theory, which I know next to nothing about).

Having said that, I thought you two might be interested to know that Royal Truman and Peter Borger have teamed-up to write some excellent stuff for CMI’s Journal of Creation. Here are a few examples. All the best—GGG

Ultraconserved sequences pose megaproblems for evolutionary theory

http://creationontheweb.com/images/pdfs/tj/j21_2/j21_2_8-9.pdf

Genetic code optimisation: Part 1

http://creationontheweb.com/images/pdfs/tj/j21_2/j21_2_90-100.pdf

Genetic code optimisation: Part 2

http://creationontheweb.com/images/pdfs/tj/j21_3/j21_3_84-92.pdf

The HAR1F gene: a Darwinian paradox

http://creationontheweb.com/images/pdfs/tj/j21_3/j21_3_55-57.pdf