I am concluding my series of blog posts dealing with information and give credit to William A. Dembski for most of the content I have shared. I trust I have succeeded in explaining information, showing just how important it is to science, to theology and to our very existence. moreover, i trust that i have succeeded in identifying the ultimate source of all information that has been actualized in all of that which has been created and is sustained to this day, God. does the reader now understand better just how majestic, powerful, intelligent, rational, personal and loving the biblical god is? we must do our best to keep our concept of god from being too small!

Dembski argues in Chapter 20, “The Creation of Information,” that “intelligence is the ultimate source of information, . . . I come at this question as a Christian for whom God, as creator, is the ultimate source of all there is, and thus of all the information in the world. My model for information creation, therefore, cannot be bottom up, as in trying to reconstitute information from material processes, but rather must be top down, as in trying to understand the creation of information from the vantage of a creative intelligence (in particular, the Christian God).”

We have read posts that deal with intelligence, information and matter, but what about energy? Dembski addresses the topic of energy in the following excerpts:

“Information changes dynamically, with information passing in, through, and out of matter. . . . Anything that exhibits information needed at some point to be imparted with information. What causes information to undergo such dynamic transformation? The usual answer to this question is stated in one word: energy. . . . energy is logically downstream from information in the sense that energy is always inferred from information, but not vice versa. . . . Energy . . . seems unavoidable in discussions about the dynamics of information. . . . When information happens - and it happens all the time - what causes it to happen? . . . energy is as good an answer as exists. This answer makes energy the causal glue that connects diverse items of information in an informational universe.”

Dembski specifically mentions an immaterial energy in this context, and I have addressed such energy in blog posts that discuss the role of wave forms in the transmission of linguistic neural codes through synaptic networks by the process of quantum tunneling.

“The expression ‘effected spoken word’ . . . means this: an agent, in forming an intention [a thought of a cognitive mind], accomplishes it by first articulating the intention as a word [for example, the linguistic neural code I have discussed in my books and in many blogs], then transmitting that word through a speech act [for example, the transmission of neural codes through synchronous synaptic networks], and finally ensuring that this spoken word achieves its desired effect [the action end point that completes the definition of information, as discussed by Werner Gitt]. . . . When the agent is God intent on creating a world, creation likewise becomes an effected spoken word. Compare Isaiah 55:11, God speaking, ‘So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.’” (William A. Dembski)

Dembski asks a challenging and important question, “. . . what is more real, material objects or the information characteristic of material objects? I would say the information. . . . We live, move and have our being inside a matrix of information. We have no way of getting outside that matrix. Moreover, according to the Judeo-Christian account of creation, there may be no outside. If creation is, as this religious tradition teaches, an effected word spoken by God, then creation itself is a primal informational act. Moreover, the outworking of this creation in all its details will then be a series of echoes stemming from that primal act. Given such an account of creation, the search for a substratum of reality more basic than information would be futile.”

Dembski’s comments speak to the reality that the ultimate source of information is a mind, in this case the Mind of God.

Dembski cites cybernetics founder, Norbert Weiner, who “thought that information could not be subsumed under matter: ‘Information is information, not matter or energy. No materialism which does not admit this can survive at the present day.’”

I cite Dembski, who states, “As a Christian theist, I’m happy to regard the collection of all possible worlds as residing in the mind of God and then see God, in an act of creation, as actualizing one world, ours, to the exclusion of others. . . . Unlike materialism, which makes matter the starting point for inquiry, information makes the actual world and the possibilities associated with it the starting point. Information thus allows the world to be whatever it is. . . . We know that a world exists and that it realizes certain possibilities to the exclusion of others, thereby generating information.”

“[Dembski’s] argument is that intelligence creates information, which in turn can manifest itself materially, and that intelligence is thus the preeminent first cause. This puts matter causally downstream from both intelligence and information, making it a subordinate and derivative concept. . . .Dembski not only takes information to be the fundamental substance, but also clearly believes . . . that this substance ultimately originates with a personal God who intentionally gives being to the world, ordering its material structure and guiding its inhabitants for a purpose.”

In my studies and writings I have relied significantly upon the work of William A. Dembski. I am sharing his comments that consider how God, who is immaterial and Spirit, interacts with the material world, including the human brain. Quantum mechanics gives nondeterminism to the universe which characterizes it as being informationally open and accommodating free will. Here is Dembski’s informative quote taken from my book, The Boundless Love of God: A Holy Spirit Story:

“. . . such [an open] universe will produce . . . patterns of events that stand out against the backdrop of randomness. . . . Such patterns [intended by God] could reasonably be interpreted as constituting novel information inputted from outside the system . . . in a nondeterministic universe, diving action could impart information into matter [e.g. a neural synaptic network] without violating any physical laws by which matter operates . . . A deity capable of co-opting randomness would impart information by arranging outcomes [with small probabilities and specification], but do so by channeling the material energy [e.g. of quantum tunneling in synaptic transmission] in ways that violate no principle governing matter. If divine action takes this form, the problem of finding the missing material energy by which God introduces novel information into the world simply does not arise. . . . information is then being transferred without any transfer of material energy. . . . Quantum mechanics . . . offers such a picture of the universe, allowing God free play at the quantum level. . . . In a world of irreducibly chance or random events [integral to the neural synapse], as some interpretations of quantum theory allow, [the Mind of] God can channel such events [and communications] toward preordained ends.”

Since the mind of Man is created in the image of the Mind of God, the postulate that Dembski shares reasonably applies to the immaterial mind of Man which can also channel communications of encoded information toward preordained ends with meaning and purpose.

i am including this blog excerpted from von baeyer that defines entropy in relation to information. it is a difficult concept to grasp, but an important one. god created all within the cosmos from a foundation, if you will, of limitless entropy to one of zero entropy, such as a human finger, among countless other examples.

von Baeyer discusses entropy in the context of information in his book. He referenced Ludwig Boltzmann who “pointed out that . . . the value of entropy rises from zero, when we know all about a system, to its maximum value when we know least. . . . Entropy is . . . about our lack of information.”

God, who is the ultimate Source of all information, held the “maximum value” of informational entropy at the Beginning of creation when He had not yet specified how information would be instantiated into given creations. All possibilities existed in the Mind of God. As God specified how information would be selectively actualized, possibilities were ruled out, and aspects of given created systems became known with the value of entropy approaching, or becoming, zero.

As one reads this blog post one may understand better how information, as a topic, can escape one’s attention and comprehension. I have addressed entropy in the context of information here and in my books so that readers can come to an understanding of it, especially beholding God’s glory in His creation of our universe and all within it.