ID, Information, and Human Perception

What he said!exactly.

Intellegent design and is there a designer or is our existance a mere coincidence that happened out of random chance? I have to say Yaro that I believe the latter not to make sense to me. For my own comfort I like to believe there is a plan and order to the existance of organized matter that has formed conciousness to ponder such questions. My name sake is a interesting number in that it appears throughout natural phenomenon. The ratio suggest there is some order and organization that is over the randomness and caos of subatomic quauntum foam. Reality exist literally from nothing. Dive in deep enough into the fabric of what makes up reality and what is it? Atoms? And what are they? Subatomic particles? And that? quarks, nutrinos, thigamagigs? All manifesting forces in nature that make up our universe as well as the ability to try and comprehend it. But try as I may to chalk it up to luck of the draw that the elements in our periodic table just so happen to posses the needed arrangement of electrons to support my physical body I cant do it. Life has evolved from the alphabet soup and random as it is may have been the laws of the phyical universe are keeping it all in order. It is this thing called "laws of the physical universe that I define as My God. And he is a great cook. I await my thrashing from resident atheist

Mr. Golden Ratio I don't think this is an irrational possition at all. I happen to agree with you that this universe is in and of itself a remarkable construct. And indeed quite godlike in the fact that it seems to have just "allways been" in one form or another.I like to think of it in a very Eastern way in the idea that we are all parts of this universe, this cycle of energy, and that death and life are all interrelated. We never truely die but manifest in different forms as our prime material is reused ad infinitum.However, this God, is at best totaly neutral and without intent. He is caught in a state of being, and that is all he does. Like the aborigional mythos, we are all caught in his irrational dream Wow dude!hehehehSorry to wax poeteic

Yeah Yaro,, I think if God wore a T shirt it would say:
"Its all Good" I am leaning in the Eastern direction as well.

Damn, i'm a too sloppy reader... missed the Saviourmachine last post before heh...

No, I meant it in praise!I think you put what I was trying to say very clearly! I was saying "what he said!" as in, "I mean what he said!".heheh.What you posted was good.

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Intellegent design and is there a designer or is our existance a mere coincidence that happened out of random chance? I have to say Yaro that I believe the latter not to make sense to me. For my own comfort I like to believe there is a plan and order to the existance of organized matter that has formed conciousness to ponder such questions.

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I just can't see why a creator is more comforting than spontanious arrisal of life! I gives me much more comfort knowing that no matter what, creator or no creator life will still emerge! It feels like a creator is much more limiting. If he/she exists he must either have come from somewhere or always been. If he came at some time he is not the creator of all. Since other things existed before or aside him. Surely we could have been created by such an entity. But hey! Why? It doesn't explain where he came from. Maybe he was created by another... and so on. Since i see no reason to belive so, i dont!On the other hand, if he always existed it means that he is all of the universe, otherwise some part of the universe was there before him. So now I can just as easily say, "i belive in the existance of universe" instead of "i belive in the existance of god".
Since i see no what so ever evidence for that the universe is behaving intelligient in any way. It just is ticking on like a clock.

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Life has evolved from the alphabet soup and random as it is may have been the laws of the phyical universe are keeping it all in order.

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I dont think any particular order is better than any other order for a universe. From the perspective of human existance maybe but one can't apply human perspective in another reality. Any arrangement of the fundamental laws and constants of physics will also create a universe. Just different. Natural selection works in any system where parts interact, evolved intelligent life would just be... another thing. =D

the golden ratio is also the ratio of the side of a pentagon to the 'diagonal' length (used to draw stars). now you know how to draw a pentagon with a compass and a straight edge (classic geometry).you two may also want to check out deism:
Deism - Wikipediaand relating this back to the thread topic, see:
http://mywebpage.netscape.com/AbbyLeever/ID-evaluation.htmenjoy.

You call it by what ever name suits. If Triangles had a god it would have three sides. I am human and therefore I assign my human perception to the world. I am not saying I know the answers to whether there was a creator no one can say for certain. But if you ask yourself what is reality? When all the thinking and meditating and searching is finished the bottom line is that reality is your perception. Yes I do believe there is an objective reality but it does not matter because what ever this thing I am sitting on is I am human and percieve it to be what I have learned and formed memories of and have had experiance with and have learned to call it a chair. I am human and when I see the beauty of a childs smile or the utter joy of feeling the sun warm my face as it rises I can not help but feel comforted in the thought that this is not just a random event that I am here existing just because some matter happened to come together just right.It is my perception of God and hence my reality. God made real by me. You may feel comforted in feeling your existance is just a passing form of matter with no reason or plan, that all you are is a collection of protiens and water and minerals. but for me and millions of others we take comfort in feeling Gods presence in our existance and in feeling there is something more to us than flesh. And although I am not so naive not to know this may just be an illusion It makes me happy and isnt that what its all about? Just my opinion and nothing more.

Now we are moving into perceptions of reality with the slippery slope to solipsism. How do we know if your reality is my reality? Is there one reality or 6 billion?We are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understandIf your ability, based on past objective experiences and education, is different from mine (and it will be), will not your perception of an event differ from mine no matter how closely we share the experience? Your experience of reality will differ from mine ... so how can we find what reality is really there?For me it comes down to nonsense quotients: how much of your own experiences education, and your perceptions of the experiences and education of others you must classify as nonsense relative to your overall knowledge in order to maintain your personal worldview -- the higher the nonsense quotient is, the less likely the worldview reflects reality.See more at
http://mywebpage.netscape.com/...Leever/Ideas-of-Reality.htmenjoy.

Well now you are a bit picky i'd say

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I am human and when I see the beauty of a childs smile or the utter joy of feeling the sun warm my face as it rises I can not help but feel comforted in the thought that this is not just a random event that I am here existing just because some matter happened to come together just right.It is my perception of God and hence my reality

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How does the smell of screaming burning babies fit into this picture? After all they are part of the picture too. Or the crushing sound of knee-caps beeing hit with a hammer? Or the cry of a deformed child beeing teased by other children ? Are you also comforted by these events, since they are part of the universe as much as the sunlight on your face.

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You may feel comforted in feeling your existance is just a passing form of matter with no reason or plan

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Well i have lots if reasons for existing, thank you Like when I see the beauty of a childs smile or the utter joy of feeling the sun warm my face as it rises. The plan part I really don't understand. What do you mean? What plan has god for you, and how are you comforted by it?I'd agree with your notion that the mere fact that we are here experiencing things is the heart of the matter. But these things are both good and bad sensations. The awareness just can't be understood or explained. Maybe awareness is something that arises out of complexity? Given by a god? Built into the structure of the universe?Perhaps, but it still does not explain anything.
Not by science, philosophy or religon. The idea that God set us here for a reason and with a plan says nothing. What is that plan? If you are comforted by that plan I'm me happy for you, even though I still puzzled

Well I have not stated that my perception of reality is anything other than "my" own. And as I have stated in my post it is merely my own opinion. I also stated that I do believe in a Objective reality as well. My whole point was that my perception of the world I live in includes God in the picture. Although I can not say for certain God exist I like to think he does, and that puts a smile on my face. I will check out your link and get back to you , thanks Abby.

Burning babies? I dont know about you but personally I have never seen or heard a burning baby. I have never heard a hammer hit a knee cap, and I have never seen a episode of the Sapranos. Although I know tragedy and horrible things happen daily and although I know it is arbitrary.
It does not change my positive outlook on life in general. I am in the medical field and see regret, and pain and unspeakable things that the lay person does not even think about. Your point is well taken there is bad things in the world, but there are good things too and if one wishes to concentrate on the good and maintain some optimism and be greatful for they're blessings then why is that cause for anyone to question? When I said you may feel comforted in feeling your existance is a passing form of matter with no reason or plan I did not mean that to be offensive in anyway and apologize if it came across that way. Your comfortable with the non god view and I am comfortable with thinking there may be one. That is what is so great about this forum people like you and I can exchange our thoughts. I gave you my opinion you gave me yours. And thats how the world goes round.

Structure
DNA is a sort of data stack, okay. But it's data with structure and so it's not data an sich. Arrangements of matter is matter that's structured, not matter an sich. To say that it's pure matter, or that in truth everything is just matter isn't addressing the problem. There is a difference between unorganized data and organized data.Hierarchy and recursivity
Systems have a sort of hierarchy. There are operators that aren't functioning on the lower or the upper levels. Here our human viewpoint can decieve us, because we can't see every level at once.
Structure from which parts can reused as sub-structures are recursive, a typical example is human language. That's something that every intellect would notice, don't you think so?Holism
And what I already mentioned, summed up in the popular phrase: "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts".Self-organization
Of course, organized data doesn't will organize spontaneously. There has to be at least some self-organizing organism behind it. Maybe you think I want to let you say that there have to be ID because of the observed hierarchy. But, that's a little bit too fast. First we've to examine how the mechanism of self-organization did become part of our universe.

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The existence of information
What I want to stress is that there is structure and self-organizing even without human observers. I regard self-organizing as a kind of probing, a primitive kind of observing. To assign the term information to that particular data set is a small step by then.

Self-organization -> probing -> observing -> interpreting -> information

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Links:
It's a scientif challenge: "Towards a theory of everything?" pdf html

What would you consider unorganized data? What is unorganized about the molecular structure of a quarts crystal for example? Everything in this universe is potential data, and can be viewd as organized in some context.Could you show an example of disorganized data?I see nothing intrinsicaly special about DNA. Could you explain further? Yes, but recursivity does not necessitate intellect. For example, if you go out to arizona you see these crazy rock formations. Alot of them are incredibly complex structures.One I recal is this particularly big stone perched on this very thin column. It looks impossible, like a crane had to put it up there. But what happend was that the stone was of harder rock than the piller it was perched on. Over thousands of years watter eroded the piller from what was once a huge chunk of flat land.So you see, the stone relied on simpler sub-structures, to produce even more comples structures. Yet this process involved no intelect.If you want something closer to the subject at hand, you could easely point to crystal formation. There you have molecules organizing themselves into recursive patterns to produce even more complex formations. I don't see why this would be particular to ID. The universe is greater than the sum of it's parts. A rock is, a pile of dirt is. How is this particular to ID? Sel-organization occurs outside of life as well. The very existance of the galaxy, crystals, etc. are all based on "self-organizing" mechanisims.EDIT:I just noticed your link! I will review what this fellow has to say, perhapse he sheds more light on the subject than you or I can.I will respond more later once I have digested the paper you have provided.[This message has been edited by Yaro, 03-17-2004]