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.

In my books and several blog posts I have referred to the work of William A. Dembski, specifically to his book Being as Communion: A Metaphysics of Information. I complement my last blog with selected comments by Dembski in Chapter 3, “Information as Ruling Out Possibilities”:

“In everyday life, information is associated with intelligent agents who form statements to convey meaning. Accordingly, intelligent agents convey information to other intelligent agents by making meaningful statements within a system of language. Information, therefore, customarily presupposes intelligence, language, and semantics. . . . In general, information is about realizing possibilities by ruling out others. Unless possibilities are ruled out, no information can be conveyed. To say, ‘It’s raining or it’s not raining’ is uninformative precisely because this statement rules out no possibilities. On the other hand, to say, ‘It’s raining’ rules out the possibility ‘It’s not raining’ and therefore conveys information. . . . Writing in the context of human communication, Robert Stalnaker put it this way, ‘To learn something, to acquire information, is to rule out possibilities. To understand the information conveyed in a communication is to know what possibilities would be excluded by its truth.’”

I have shared with documentation in my books that the neural code is a linguistic code by which specified (meaningful) information is transmitted from a source of intelligence to and through the synaptic networks of a receptor’s brain.

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)

in my next blog post i shall include dr. william dembski’s definition of complex specified information. in an earlier post i have presented a description, but it is important to post that of dr. dembski who initially defined it in his writings. it reflects the design of our creator god, a manifestation of his intelligence in all that exists in the cosmos. it reveals how great is our god!

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)

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)