Currently (9:00 am EST) in the top 100 in the Kindle store, despite the sweetheart deals offered this summer, for buying the book.
For a thing to be real, it must be able to communicate with other things. If this is so, then the problem of being receives a straightforward resolution: to be is to be in communion. So the fundamental science, indeed the science that needs to underwrite all other sciences, is a theory of communication. Within such a theory of communication the proper object of study becomes not isolated particles but the information that passes between entities. In Being as Communion philosopher and mathematician William Dembski provides a non-technical overview of his work on information. Dembski attempts to make good on the promise of John Wheeler, Paul Davies, and others that information is poised to replace matter as the primary stuff of reality. With profound implications for theology and metaphysics, Being as Communion develops a relational ontology that is at once congenial to science and open to teleology in nature. All those interested in the intersections of theology, philosophy and science should read this book.
Here’s part of a review a reader sent:
Dembski leaves nothing to chance, not even chance itself. He is also a mathematician, so he looks at chance from the perspective of probability theory. He sees chance events through the law of large numbers and probability distribution. When looking at any event, we may prematurely assume—taken in isolation—that the event is (strictly speaking) random; however, in looking at all events aggregately, the probability distribution of those events will begin to show a pattern. He writes:
“For instance, as a coin is tossed repeatedly, the proportion of heads will tend to ½. This stable pattern to coin tossing is justified both theoretically (various probabilistic laws of “large numbers” confirm it) and practically (when people flip coins a large number of times, they tend to see roughly the same proportion of heads and tails).”
Information, Dembski writes, “is produced when certain possibilities are realized to the exclusion of others within a matrix of possibility…. It follows that information can be measured.”
See also: Brief excerpt from Being as Communion
Also How is Steve Meyer’s Darwin’s Doubt doing? (Continues to lead, and Christians defending Darwin continue to detract.)
Thought: Will Christians defending Darwin actually read Being as Communion first? Detract later?
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