Eric Anderson

Not too many months ago I ran across Richard Dawkins’ statement that life got its start when, somehow, on the early Earth a self-replicating molecule formed.  I nearly fell out of my chair laughing.  I had read the quote before, and he has repeated the idea in various writings and interviews, but after having studied the issues with abiogenesis in a bit more detail, in particular the concept of a self-replicating molecule to kick off the origin of life, the idea struck me as particularly preposterous. In this post, I want to follow up on the other recent thread regarding abiogenesis.  This time, however, I want to focus on the matter of self-replication. The Abiogenesis Paradigm As mentioned, the idea Read More ›

Recently we have been discussing Dr. Sewell’s thermodynamics-related paper/video on this thread.  In addition to some excellent discussion on the Second Law, the question of abiogenesis has naturally arisen.  Though related to the Second Law issue (by way of the compensation argument), I would like to move discussion of the abiogenesis question to this new thread, both so we can keep the other thread more focused on the Second Law, and also so we can have a more in-depth discussion here on this most fascinating topic of abiogenesis. —– I find posts that go on for dozens of pages to be rather tedious.  Notwithstanding my original intent, this post grew in length as I laid out the various points.  In Read More ›

A couple of days ago Dr. Granville Sewell posted a video (essentially a summary of his 2013 Biocomplexity paper).  Unfortunately, he left comments off (as usual), which prevents any discussion, so I wanted to start a thread in case anyone wants to discuss this issue. Let me say a couple of things and then throw it open for comments. 1. I typically do not argue for design (or against the blind, undirected materialist creation story) by referencing the Second Law.  I think there is too much misunderstanding surrounding the Second Law, and most discussions about the Second Law tend to generate more heat (pun intended) than light.  Dr. Sewell’s experience demonstrates, I think, that it is an uphill battle to Read More ›

In my first post I discussed the concept of information, in particular whether information is contained in a physical object by its mere existence.  In this post I would like to consider an additional issue relating to information, namely, the point at which information arises or comes into existence. Information is often closely associated with meaning – meaning that is transmitted from a sender to a receiver.  As a result, some have suggested that information only exists when there is both a sender and a receiver who have a prior agreement about the protocols to encode the information and after there is a successful transmission, receipt and understanding of the information. However, viewing information as existing only after it has been transmitted Read More ›

First of all I want to thank the Uncommon Descent moderators for allowing me to post, with a particular hat tip to StephenB.  As I indicated on a prior thread, I am not sure how often I will take the time to create a new thread, but hopefully I can occasionally post something of interest.  Kudos to gpuccio for a wonderful first thread, relating to the basic definition of “design”.

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Intelligent Design Basics – Information

In this post I want to consider a fundamental aspect of intelligent design theory: the concept of “information”. Read More ›