Sorry about that, Dave.

Sagebrush, “I was originally understanding your use of “medium” to refer to some sort of physical entity.”

Sticking to physical reality here, information “obviously” requires a medium. The question then becomes, are subatomic events as we understand them and entities primary or not? It would seem that something somewhere would have to be primary objects, which must have some mediator between them (or they wouldn’t know about each other), or must be a manifestation of some unity, that otherwie has attributes beyond our ability to comprehend.

How does this relate to Engines?

“You have yet to tell me what godlike powers are needed to create life from inanimate matter”

I don’t think it is required. I think that human intelligence is probably capable of this, in theory, although the logistics at present are tough.

But it does bring about another question, namely, if a natural intelligence invented earthlife, what is the source of that intelligence’s existence? Here’s where the “turtle” question comes into importance. Must intelligence come from intelligence? Or is there a point where intelligence can arise from non-intelligence.

Dave, are you saying you think that intelligence can arise from non-intelligence? If so, why might not earth be one of those cases?

As I write this post, the total information content of the universe increases, does it not? If this post gets caught in a filter, and gets kissed goodbye during the purge, is the total information content of the universe not depleted?

As a practical matter the information is lost. As a theoretical matter it remains in the universe. For instance, your message generated a stream of photons in specific pattern when it appeared on my screen. Some of those photons streamed out my window and are heading out into interstellar space as we speak while others collided with particles of matter and increased the energy level of those particles. In principle all those interactions and photons retain the same amount of information and with sufficient observational capability your message can be reconstructed in its original form. As a practical matter we don’t have and probably never will have sufficient observation capacity to reconstruct the message but that doesn’t mean the information was destroyed. Hawking’s assertion was that when information goes into a black hole it is lost and can’t, even in principle, ever be recovered. He recently conceded that he was wrong and the information is in principle recoverable.

This is not relevant even tangentially to the topic of the article so don’t bother responding. If you don’t have anything to write about Engines of Creation don’t write anything at all.

I’ve put you on moderation and will delete any further comments until you either explain what physical laws prevent material intelligent agency such as humananity from creating a living cell from inanimate chemicals or you admit that there are no physical laws preventing it. I’ve asked more than once and you keep dodging the question. A bacterium, given nothing but nutrients and energy, can assemble another bacterium. What scientific reason can you give me that would deny human technology the ability to assemble a bacterium?

I was originally understanding your use of “medium” to refer to some sort of physical entity. But (since we are not materialists) we agree that consciousness exists independently of any material medium. If so, then information can also exist independently of a material medium. And if all energy and matter is fundamentally made of information (my speculation), then the medium in which all this information exists is a higher consciousness — which I would identify as the mind of G-d.

I’d better lay down — I’m feeling dizzy.

I honestly think that scientists don’t have a clue what information is, or they would recognize that unlike energ/matter information is readily both created and destroyed.

If I am wrong, show me the error of my logic in the first paragraph of this post.

You have yet to tell me what godlike powers are needed to create life from inanimate matter.

Granville

I generally use the Princeton Wordnet database for meanings. The only definition they offer for supernatural as an adjective is:

not existing in nature or subject to explanation according to natural laws; not physical or material

That definition is precisely what I meant.

Engines of Creation devotes half the chapters in the book to exploring the limits of what’s physically possible. There’s nothing I can see about life as we know it that requires supernatural powers to create from inanimate materials. One can certainly make an argument that in an infinite regression (the infamous “Who designed the designer?”) there will come a point where our knowledge hits a brick wall but we’re only talking about one regression – who designed life on earth. That task doesn’t appear to demand supernatural capabilities but perhaps does require intelligent agency.

bFast

Stephen Hawking recently conceded that information can’t be destroyed. He spent many years trying to prove it could be destroyed in a black hole.

I propose that we consider supernatural = extrauniversal — anything outside of our universe is supernatural. Oh, of course multiverse theories, and any other such speculations would also be extrauniversal, and therefore prohibited by science. If we consider this, however, we still can concieve of biology being developed by an intrauniversal intelligent agent, but we cannot see the big bang being spawned by the same. This definition continues to lead us to a supernatural/extrauniversal agent instigating the big bang.