ID taken to the end

That's an unusual statement. Newton was the breakthrough guy that pretty much formalised physics. So has Dembski made any breakthroughs in IT? I would have thought Claude Shannon was more deserving of the title, and even then the praise is far too high...Newton not only invented a whole branch of mathematics, but he formalised motion, gravity, optics, heat (convection) and invented a telescope.What has Dembski done to deserve such grand comparison? Or are you referring to Newton's less than savoury characteristics...I've not seen enough of Dembski to tell.

It is an absolute truth (as absolute truths go) as far as I can see, but it isn't news. Its just a logical extension of conservation of energy. Its a nonsense argument as far as evolution goes though because no new information is needed - change occurs as a result of a selection method based on the population's environment. The information isn't 'created' - it's already there in the environment.This message has been edited to fix some clumsy language by Modulous, Fri, 09-September-2005 01:15 PMThis message has been edited by Modulous, Fri, 09-September-2005 01:16 PM

Remember that laws are empirical truths.Situation A ->present day universe.Let's look at our sun. The sun contains information, lots of it. To describe the sun we'd need to describe the energy state of all the particles with in, their gravity, charge and so on. Many bits of information.Hypothetical Situation B->heat dead universe.First off, we don't have a sun anymore. But just to keep things sane let's look at all the quanta of energy that made up the sun in Situation A. They all have the same amount of energy. I'm not sure how gravity works in this scenario but they would have 0 charge since there is no workable energy.Our sun, indeed everything in our universe has less information.An experiment would require an isolated system and a fusion based explosion.That is to say that thermodynamics is the most straightforward way to demonstrate that information is eventually lost. That information cannot be created is also based in thermodynamics.Naturally, quantum physics muddies the water somewhat, but as far as I am aware not to the point where it refutes the idea.However, it is irrelevant. The central point is that 'Dembski's law' is a) nothing new, b) has no bearing on evolution since evolution is taking existing information and changing it so that it becomes a copy of the information in the environment and c) misnamed, since information isn't conserved, it's just not created

I didn't make any excuses. I provided you with an experimental set up. No, we can't. Sorry. We can set up experiment which demonstrates it is probably true, but we cannot measure the amount of energy in the universe before an event, and the amount after it. Can you clarify this sentence?Strike that, I don't want you to and after I've woken up a little I think I understand what you are saying. I provide a link in Message 53 which discusses the science of what I am talking, and Message 53 might help clarify for you what I'm actually saying. Sorry for being dragged into a peculiar off topic spin, I certainly didn't expect to. As such my last post in this thread regarding this subject is Message 53, any further discussion should be on a new thread if somebody decides to create one.This message has been edited by Modulous, Sat, 10-September-2005 07:57 AM

Well I see your point, but I don't think there is more information in a concentrated area of energy than a diffuse one (maybe there is though, its 7am).This wiki article (I prefer answers.com formatting) seems to be discussing basically what I am discussing: physical information (and the physicality, or embodiment, of said information).From the website:

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For a system S, defined abstractly in such a way that it has N distinguishable states (orthogonal quantum states) that are consistent with its description, the amount of information I(S) contained in the system's state can be said to be log(N).

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It then goes on to say that if we use a natural log, things start to resemble thermodynamic equations (Boltzman's)...this tends to cause IDers to fall over themselves in excitement (a webwide google or forumwide search for 'jerry don bauer' will show this to anyone interested).Anyway, thinking about your question further I would tend (pun intended (pun not intended)) to agree with your more specific wording. Indeed we can go further, the universe has a finite maximum storage capacity and it has a finite current storage capacity. It is highly improbable that this current storage capacity will increase, and highly probable that it will decrease.We cannot increase our maximum storage capacity since this would mean creating energy (which is the idea I had in mind when I mentioned it originally), but we can decrease our current storage capacity by increasing the amount of unworkable energy in the system and of course we can increase our local storage capacity by doing work.For a talk origins read, there is a quick article here which discusses my actual point when I started discussing this in Message 39.

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Even if there were a law of conservation of information, it would not necessarily invalidate evolution. Information is transferred from the environment to organisms by natural selection and other processes.

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which is basically what I started off actually saying: I know I've gone on at some length based on quite a straightforward question, but I intend this to be the last word I say on this in this thread:- Nuggin is right in that it is off topic and in danger of getting really off topic. As such, any further questions I shall refer to this post and invite people to start a new thread.

Since this is off topic, why don't you start a new thread on it, as I suggested in Message 53?