Good Design - 2/3

In the last decade or two, the Intelligent Design (ID) movement has really made great strides in developing the idea that there really has to be a Designer behind what we see in nature. A leader in this area has been Michael Behe, particularly with his arguments around what he calls “irreducible complexity”.

This is the idea that random acts of gradual change, whether by mutation or otherwise cannot account for living beings, or sub-components of life, that require the simultaneous creation of more than one component in order to perform a required function.

I deal a lot with information. As a communicator, author, salesman, computer programmer, web developer and designer, husband, parent, teacher, mentor, motivator or whatever you want to call me, I take ideas and information, process them in some way, and pass them on to achieve a particular purpose.

As a parent, I teach my children how to live - giving them morals to look up to (hopefully good ones most of the time) and also information about human nature. As a web developer, I take information from a client, convert those images and words into a website that achieves the desired purpose. As an author, I take ideas and knowledge, convert it into words on a page, pictures or graphs or whatever and help others to learn or understand something.

In the process of working with information and also having studied information theory a little (esp. Dr Werner Gitt), it is clear that we need the followiung five components to information:

1. A source of the information
2. A method of sending the information
3. A language to use in sharing the information
4. A method to receive the information
5. A destination for the information
   (There’s more, in the link above and in Werner Gitt’s writings)

Whether it is in relation to the DNA which holds the information that is used by the building blocks of life, or in dealing with writing a computer program, or in communicating to my wife or children, the above five components are all required. Remove one, and communication fails.

This is an example of irreducible complexity, (which incidentally proves the impossibility of random-based evolution and the necessary existence of a Designer/Creator) in which all components must exist simultaneously in order for them to work.

There is no use for a computer, without a programmer (1). There is no use for a computer without a keyboard (2). If I cannot program in the correct language, or if the language doesn’t exist, nothing will happen (3). Likewise if the computer has no hard disk space, or memory, or cannot receive the data, then communication fails (4 & 5).

The same thing applies at a cellular level. The microscopic components of a cell all send and receive information and need all five items above just the same way as I do when I write a website, book or talk to my wife.

According to the Good Book, God is plural. In Christianese, it’s called the “Trinity” which includes the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. According to my calculations, if this is the case, information theory must have existed for quite some time:

Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness;
Genesis 1:26a

“Us”

“God said”

Here’s that information and communication idea again.

If information theory existed before man was created on earth, VICTUS IN AMBITUS money is on Good Design having come from a Good Designer rather than from some random, um . . . - well, random something.