RE: What does ID mean?

Garry DeWeese (DeWeese@Colorado.edu)
Thu, 16 Apr 1998 20:06:06 -0600

At 07:30 PM 4/16/1998 -0500, Glenn Morton wrote:
>At 01:02 PM 4/16/98 -0600, Garry DeWeese wrote:
>
>>This has bothered me for some time. My understanding is that the Shannon
>>entropy of a highly complex sequence, one of high information content, will
>>approach that of a random sequence. The difference between a highly
>>complex sequwence and a random one is meaning. But meaning is conveyed by
>>language.
>
>This is not correct Garry. There is NO mathematical measure of meaning.
>There is only a mathematical measure of information content. As Yockey
>clearly states, and the ID group and other Christians who use his stuff
>clearly miss, [quote from Yockey snipped]

I probably stated my concern badly, Glenn. I did not mean to assert that
there was a mathematical measure of meaning. In fact, that was precisely
my point. It was reading Yockey several years ago, and remembering then my
work in data transmission during my Air Force days, that I began to be
bothererd. As you said, Christians who use Yockey's stuff miss this
crucial distinction. (I was one of them--and, frankly, still would like to
be.)

>When a mathematician says 'fundamentally undecidable", it means that it is
>impossible to determine whether a sequence is random or designed. This means
>that we can't tell whether the genetic code was randomly produced or
>intelligently designed.
>
>I have never heard an ID person address this crucial issue.

This is exactly what I had in mind that bothered me! Thanks for making my
point better than I did!

Garry DeWeese