I am concluding my series of blog posts dealing with information and give credit to William A. Dembski for the content I have shared. I trust I have succeeded in explaining information, showing just how important it is to science and to our very existence.

I will resume my review of selected articles from primarily peer review scientific literature that addresses the mechanism of synaptic transmission, confirming the dualist interaction between that which is immaterial and which is material. How does the immaterial Mind of God and mind of Man interact with the material components of synaptic networks of the human brain?

Dembski provides an excellent etymology of “intelligent” in his book:

The word intelligent comes from the Latin [language]. It stems from two Latin words, the preposition inter, meaning between, and the Latin . . . verb lego, meaning to choose or select. . . . According to its Latin etymology, intelligence therefore consists in choosing between. In an act of information creation, an intelligence chooses which possibility within a matrix of possibility to actualize. In the ultimate act of information creation, a supreme intelligence chooses which world among all possible worlds to actualize. The world so chosen becomes the real world. . . . Thus, for me, a nonmaterial trinitarian God is the supreme intelligence and ultimate reality. Moreover, this God creates via speech acts. God speaks and things happen. Or, alternatively, God communicates information and new possibilities are actualized.”

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).”

Dembski addresses the property that gives definition to intelligence:

“The defining property of intelligence is its ability to create information. . . . The ability of intelligence to create information should be more obvious and convincing to us than any claim of the natural sciences. Why? Because (1) we ourselves are intelligent beings who create information all the time through our thoughts and language and (2) the natural sciences themselves are logically downstream from our ability to create information (if we were not information creators, we could not formulate scientific theories, much less search for those that are empirically adequate, in which case there would be no science). Materialist philosophy, however, has all this backwards, making a materialist science primary and then defining our intelligence out of existence because materialism leaves no room for it (except as unintended motions and modifications of matter). The saner course would be to leave no room for materialism.”

Dembski states that “a nondeterministic universe can be informationally porous and thus open to action by a deity able to impart information without imparting material energy. Quantum mechanics, when interpreted as a fundamentally probabilistic theory, offers such a picture of the universe, allowing God free play at the quantum level. . . . In a world of irreducibly chance or random events, as some interpretations of quantum theory allow, God can channel such events toward preordained ends.”

We have seen in my books and in selected blogs that synaptic transmission is stochastic, or random. It is a nondeterminism that allows the intent of a mind, including the Mind of God, to influence the direction and intensity of spike trains of action potentials through synchronous synaptic networks to bring about specific actions. Quantum mechanics provides the “trigger” mechanism for such action by the process of quantum tunneling, and it is wave forms with frequency, amplitude and shape that serve as the nonmaterial energy for specified information transmission, interacting with the material electrochemical energies along dendrites and axons in the nervous system.

I cite Dembski:

“More generally, in any inquiry, scientific or otherwise, if we are trying to understand an information transfer, the first thing we witness is an information relationship, and only then are we in a position to uncover how energy might have given rise to that relationship. Some form of energy must presumably be involved - we are supposing that information transfers require energy transfers (though not necessarily material energy transfers). Moreover, if the energy can’t be material, then it must be nonmaterial.”

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.

Dr. Dembski challenges the long-held primacy of matter for science, with the claim that reduction to materialistic explanations have a hold on primacy. I am posting a quotation from Dembski:

“. . . information is, in the end, always the product of a creative intelligence. This would make intelligence rather than information the most basic metaphysical entity [the Mind of God], placing all-sufficiency with intelligence rather than information. Indeed, as a theist, I regard an intelligent being, God, as the prime reality. The issue here, however, is not the primacy of intelligence or teleology for metaphysics. The issue, rather, is the primacy of information for science. I am arguing that information should properly be regarded as the prime entity and object of study in science, displacing matter from its current position of eminence.”

“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. In the next blog post I will include Dembski’s comments in a footnote that expand on this point.