The principal characteristic of intelligent agency is choice. “Intelligent” derives from two Latin words, the preposition inter, meaning between, and the verb lego, meaning to choose or select. Thus, according to its etymology, intelligence consists in choosing between. For an intelligent agent to act is therefore to choose from a range of competing possibilities. . . . Actualizing one among several competing possibilities, ruling out the rest, and specifying the one that was actualized encapsulates how we recognize intelligent agency, or equivalently, how we detect design, (W. A. Dembski)

Complex specified information . . . requires a dual ruling-out of possibilities, one by an intelligent agent who identifies a pattern [such as a linguistic neural code with structure, meaning and purpose] and one by physical processes that induce an event [such as spike trains of action potentials that transmit neural codes through neural synaptic networks to bring about specific actions]. Provided these coincide, the probability is small, and the pattern can be identified independently of the event, we say the event exhibits complex specified information. Complex specified information reliably detects design. (W. A.Dembski)

Ordinarily when we think of information, we think of meaningful statements that we communicate to each other. The vehicle of communication here is language, and the information is the meaning communicated by some utterance or linguistic expression. . . . For information to be generated . . . means identifying one possibility and ruling out the rest. The more possibilities get ruled out and, correspondingly, the more improbable the possibility that actually obtains, the greater the information generated. . . . To generate information is therefore to rule out possibilities. (w. A. Dembski)

Dr. Dembski points out in his article that the relation between matter and information can become controversial when they are mixed with design and nature. “. . . designing intelligences are not the only causal powers capable of structuring matter and thereby conferring information. Nature, too, is capable of structuring matter and conferring information. . . . Nature and design therefore represent two different ways of producing information. Nature produces information, as it were, internally. . . . design [consists] in capacities external to an object for bringing about its form with outside help. . . . nature [consists] in capacities internal to an object for transforming itself without outside help. . . . information is conferred on an object from outside the object and that the material constituting the object, apart from that outside information, does not have the power to assume the form it does. . . . Nature produces information not by imposing it from outside but by growing or developing informationally rich structures from within. . . . an information-theoretic design argument contends that the art of building certain information-rich structures in nature (like biological organisms) is not in the physical stuff that constitutes these structures but requires a designer.” (W. A. Dembski)

Matter is raw stuff that can take any number of shapes. Information is what gives shape to matter, fixing one shape to the exclusion of others. . . . Information (from the Latin verb informare) literally means to give form or shape to something. Unlike passive or inert matter, which needs to be acted upon, information is active. Information acts on matter to give it its form, shape, arrangement, or structure. . . . The relation between matter, with its potential to assume any possible shapes, and information, with its restriction of possibilities to a narrow range of shapes, is fundamental to our understanding of the world. (W. A. Dembski)

We need here to draw a clear distinction between creation and design. Creation is always about the source of being of the world. Design is about arrangements of preexisting materials that point to an intelligence. Creation and design are therefore quite different. . . . Creation asks for an ultimate resting place of explanation - the source of being of the world. Design, by contrast, inquires not into the ultimate source of matter and energy but into the cause of their present arrangements, particularly those entities, large and small, that exhibit signs of intelligence. (W. A. Dembski)

The design argument begins with features of the natural world that exhibit evidence of purpose and from there attempts to establish the existence and attributes of an intelligent cause responsible for those features. (W. A. Dembski)

In my books and my blogs on this website I have often referred to information, matter, design and intelligence. I have endeavored to explain both what the terms mean and how they relate, fundamentally to our Creator God. This is a challenging task. Dr. William A. Dembski has made significant contributions to intelligent design and how information and energy are related. In the next series of blogs I will post excerpts from his article, “An Information-Theoretic Proof of God’s Existence.” (https://billdembski.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/) He identified the most troubling word in the title, “proof,” a word that derives etymologically from the Latin probare, which means to test and to approve or esteem as good that which has passed a test. It is in this sense that he describes how information theory approves God’s existence. By citing the writing and work of Dr. Dembski in this article I believe these terms will be clarified as few people can.

Dr. Penfield addressed the question of whether the human mind survives after death and how it relates to energy:

. . . it is clear that, in order to survive after death, the mind must establish a connection with a source of energy other than that of the brain. If not, the mind must disappear forever as surely as the brain and the body die and turn to dust. If, however, during life, when brain and mind are awake, direct communication is sometimes established with the minds of other men or with the mind of God, then it is clear that energy from without can reach a man’s mind. In that case, it is not unreasonable for him to hope that after death the mind may waken to another source of energy. I mean that if the active mind of a man does communicate with other active minds, . . . it could do so only by the transfer of some form of energy from mind to mind directly. Likewise, if the mind of man communicates with the mind of God directly, that also suggests that energy, in some form, passes from spirit to spirit.

Again, I refer you to my two books and my blogs, especially that posted above entitled, “Waves in Our Brains,” Parts One and Two. This important and challenging question posed by Dr. Penfield has been addressed over 20 years of my research. By the grace of God perhaps our understanding is becoming a little closer to the truth.

. . . the nature of the mind presents the fundamental problem, perhaps the most difficult and most important of all problems. For myself, after a professional lifetime spent in trying to discover how the brain accounts for the mind, it comes as a surprise now to discover, during this final examination of the evidence, that the dualist hypothesis seems the more reasonable of the two possible explanations [the other being that the brain explains the mind]. . . . What a thrill it is, then, to discover that the scientist, too, can legitimately believe in the existence of the spirit. (Wilder Penfield)