In comment [25] to my last post , The ID hypothesis, Elizabeth Liddle asks about information. I think I’ve been at this long enough to predict how an exchange between me and Elizabeth would go.
Barry’s Point 1:
Let’s take the information in your comment [25]. I am sure you will agree your comment contains specified complex information. Indeed, your one little comment contains more specified complex information than we could reasonably attribute to chance and necessity working from the beginning of the universe to this moment.
Barry’s Point 2:
I am sure you will agree that the cells in your body contain more complex specified information than your comment by several orders of magnitude.
Barry’s Question to Elizabeth:
If your comment contains more specified complex information than we could reasonably attribute to chance and necessity working from the beginning of the universe to this moment, and the cells in your body contain several orders of magnitude more complex specified information than your comment, why should we attribute the complex specified information in your body to chance and necessity? Isn’t it more reasonable to attribute the CSI in the cells in your body to intelligent agency, just as we attribute the CSI in comment [25] to intelligent agency?
Elizabeth’s Probable Response 1:
The CSI in the cells in my body can reasonably be attributed to the accretion of random errors.
Barry’s Response to Her Probable Response 1:
Surely you don’t believe your comment [25] could reasonably be attributed to random key strokes by our proverbial monkey. That has a sort of first blush plausibility, but as we all know the math does not work. Then why do you attribute the CSI in the cells in your body to the accretion of random errors?
Elizabeth’s Probable Response 2:
Well, it’s not just random chance. The good random errors are selected for by natural selection and bad random errors are eliminated by natural selection. So it is not pure chance. It is chance (random genetic errors) and necessity (natural selection) combined that results in the CSI.
Barry’s response to her Probable Response 2:
What an extraordinary claim! This remarkable interaction of chance and necessity to which you allude has never been observed even over trillions of reproductive events by bacteria under intense selective pressure. What non-question begging evidence do you have for your remarkable assertion? Remember, Dawkins says that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. And surely you will agree that saying the staggering amounts of CSI in living things is the result of the accretion of random errors sorted by natural selection is the most extraordinary claim ever made.
Elizabeth’s Probable Response 3:
Let’s change the subject.