From: Jim Armstrong (jarmstro@qwest.net)
Date: Thu Nov 06 2003 - 12:09:19 EST
Re: "Natural processes, over the history of the universe, have the
potential to produce up to 70 bits of information."
This sure seems to me to be a remarkable leap from a somewhat arbitrary
"let's suppose" number used by Behe to develop his argument. Here the
number is rendered as established fact.
Am I missing something (always possible!)?
JimA
Gary Collins wrote:
> --Original Message Text---
> From: asa-digest
> Date: Wed, 5 Nov 2003 05:20:01 -0500
>
> Date: Tue, 04 Nov 2003 07:51:08 -0500
> From: "Denyse O'Leary" <oleary@sympatico.ca>
> Subject: Re: Intelligent design controversy in Canada
>
> List members may be interested in an online interview with Kirk Dunston
> of the New Scholars Society in Canada, where he talks about intelligent
> design, Darwinian evolution, and genome mapping. The controversy is only
> now spreading to Canada.
>
> One of his comments:
>
> http://www.canadianchristianity.com/cgi-bin/na.cgi?nationalupdates/031023evolution
>
> Natural processes, over the history of the universe, have the potential
> to produce up to 70 bits of information. Unfortunately, just one,
> average 300-residue protein requires about 500 bits to encode. The
> simplest theoretical life form would need somewhere in the neighbourhood
> of 250 protein-coding genes.
>
> There is also an interview with me at
>
> http://www.canadianchristianity.com/cgi-bin/na.cgi?nationalupdates/031030evolution
>
>
>
> One of my comments: I only discovered how much trouble Darwinism was in
> when I took a year out of my life -- late 2002 to late 2003 -- to study
> the situation. I was appalled. Darwinism has nothing like the support
> that we are accustomed to for theories in physics or chemistry.
>
> Denyse
>
> I read these articles - thanks. One thing I was hoping to find, but
> didn't,
> is some justification for the mysterious figure of 70 bits of
> information,
> which appears as though it is a "given" for some reason.
>
> I also recently came across an interesting essay by William Hasker,
> entitled "How not to be a Reductivist." He quotes Thomas Nagel, who
> 'admits quite candidly,
> I hope there is no God! I dont want there to be a God; I dont want the
> universe to be like that'
> as saying,
>
> "My guess is that this cosmic authority problem is not a rare
> condition and that it is
> responsible for much of the scientism and reductionism of our time.
> One of the
> tendencies it supports is the ludicrous overuse of evolutionary
> biology to explain
> everything about life, including everything about the human mind.
> Darwin enabled
> modern secular culture to heave a great collective sigh of relief, by
> apparently providing
> a way to eliminate purpose, meaning, and design as fundamental
> features of the world.
> Instead they become epiphenomena, generated incidentally by a process
> that can be
> entirely explained by the operation of the nonteleological laws of
> physics on the material
> of which we and our environments are all composed."
>
> and adds,
> "Nagel himself, even though he shares in the cosmic authority problem,
> strenuously resists this
> facile appeal to Darwinism."
>
> The whole essay can be found at
> http://www.iscid.org/papers/Hasker_NonReductivism_103103.pdf
>
> /Gary
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