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EVERYTHING RUNS ON INFORMATION

 

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The article ""A Theoretical Biologist's Mission Impossible: Banish Teleology While Retaining Meaning" states: "The universe and all life run on information, not just on [physics and] chemistry. But information is fundamentally immaterial; it chimes with mathematics and probability rather than chemistry and physics. Information also conveys meaning, a concept comprehensible only in the context of intelligence."

What is information? It is more than a random collection of data points. Imagine an alphabet soup of all the upper-case and lower-case letters, the digits 0-9, and all the special characters on a keyboard. That's simply a pile of data. Now imagine that pile getting stirred up in a big explosion, and when all the dust has settled, there on the ground is Webster's Dictionary and a bound volume of Shakespear's sonnets. No, information is data arranged into meaningful constructs.

These meaningful constructs we call logic. Not only engineering, mathematics, and programming rely on logic but also literature, history, music, and art – indeed, the whole universe relies on logic. History is not just a random collection of facts about what has happened: a historian must select and arrange those facts into a meaningful sequence that explains the causation and significance (logic) of those facts. Physics and chemistry follow certain immaterial laws. Without this logic or structure, the whole universe would collapse. What is information/logic?

What holds the universe together? The Greek word for "logic" is "logos" – "In the beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was with God, and the Logos was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made through the Logos. Without the Logos was not anything made that has been made" (John 1:1-3) and "For by the Logos were all things created, in the heavens and on the earth, things visible and things invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers; all things have been created through the Logos, and for the Logos. He is before all things, and in the Logos all things are held together" (Colossians 1:16-17).

The Logos or Logic holds the universe together. Without this immaterial force, the whole universe would lose its structure and collapse into nothingness. In the article "Can Everything Be Reduced to Data?" we read – "I want to show the problems with our data-driven world and show or assemble a richer humanistic picture. Dataism is at odds with human flourishing. Data is just input into something else. If we are just data, then we are inputs into something else. It’s difficult to find a Renaissance moment in this ruinous reductionism."

We are not mere computers. Even computers must have programs, a series of logical paths and decisions designed by an intelligent being that hopefully will produce the desired results. Those programs are not mere zeros and ones electronically written onto disks or chips. They are the material embodiment of an intelligent being's designs.

We human beings are not mere meat-machines that follow the laws of physics, chemistry, and biology. Our thoughts are not mere electro-chemical processes along bundles of neurons, axions, synapses, and dendrites. The fundamental fact that we can choose between good and bad actions, better and worse behavior, tells us that there must exist an objective reality of "goodness."

When critics raise the "wattabout" question – "What about all the suffering and injustice in the world?" they are assuming there must be some fixed, objective standards of justice and good. The very fact that we can think such thoughts and make such choices implies the existence of a reality beyond the electro-chemical impulses in our nervous system. The Logos must exist in order for us to think rationally and ask such questions of morality.

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