Talk:Werner Gitt
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I think you are missing the point that Gitt is trying to make. His observation that information did not evolve from the biological organism, is based on the results of another discipline of science called Genetics. Briefly, genetic scientists have all observed(scientifically) that an organisms DNA is responsible for the characteristics/behaviour of the biological organism in question. Co-incidentally, this topic is covered by another well established field of scientific endevour called informatics, which is the study of information systems resident within biological organisms. Biological matter is governed by the Information system EMBEDDED within the organism.
If we looked at the way the body produces insulin for example(and the entire medical profession has scientifically observed this phenomenon); we OBSERVE that the pancreas NEEDS to refer to the gene which in turn copies the information for the pancreas which then uses the COPIED information to produce insulin. You see, the organism relies on the information system and NOT the other way round. The organ residing within the organism does not generate the information by itself nor is it in fact(and this can be observed scientifically) able to retain the information copied from a previous call(to the databse if you will) and so be able to circumvent the DNA(the existance of which has also been scientificaly proven by numerous independant laboratories). Incidentally, if we take a step back from information SCIENCE we can see that theDNA has been DESIGNED to perform this function.
In finishing observe that humans are incapable of creating this information but in fact are only manipulating information structures that ALREADY EXIST and this field of SCIENTIFIC endevour is called Genetics from which we derive the term ...Gene Therapy!
- I don't see what you are driving at. Of course DNA contains the information the body needs. (That's your first paragraph and most of the second, in one sentence.) The mistake is in the last sentence of the second paragraph: "if we take a step back from information SCIENCE we can see that theDNA has been DESIGNED to perform this function" - No we can't. That's just Gitt's religious belief. --tk (t) 12:40, 21 Dec 2005 (GMT)
"Balance"
Someone wrote this in the article:
To present a balanced representation
Proponents of intelligent design theory would say that the above reasoning is problematic in that it doesn't apply correctly to the laws of information. Information is neither matter nor energy. It is metaphysical by nature. It is not sugars and enzymes. Information is something other than the matter that contains it. As such, Complex Coded Information (CCI) is something the standard evolutionary theory cannot explain. Where does the information come from?
The very word Code implies an symbolic convention created for a specific purpose. The genetic code is such. It has semantics, syntax, pragmatics and is constrained to those rules. It also has exception trapping mechanisms built in.
As a written language is a set of symbols to which meaning has been assigned by some intelligence, and as a spoken language is a set of symbolic sounds to which meaning has been assigned by intelligent originiators, so DNA, as a Complex Coded Information System (CCIS), must necessarily have been originated by some intelligence. Nature, by default, has no intelligence and so cannot itself be the origin of the genetic code. Therefore, some other intelligence must be responsible for it's existence. Coded information systems, such as language, do not arise in nature by itself. There is in fact no such thing as a language coming into existence without some intelligent entities 'inventing' it.
That it is very brief view of how the Intelligent Design theory looks at the information problem for neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory.
- This totally ignores the "above reasoning". The point in our refutation is that what Gitt calls "laws of nature" are in reality Gitt's personal prejudices. His definition of information is nonstandard, which wouldn't be a problem if he consistently used that same definition. But he never shows that the information in DNA is "information" in the sense of his own definition. The same mistake is in your reasoning above: "The very word Code implies an symbolic convention created for a specific purpose. The genetic code is such." So, you are Begging the Question - you assume what you are trying to prove, namely that life was made by somebody, and then prove the assumption using the assumption itself.
- Inventing scientifically-sounding three-letter-acronyms is not a replacement for sound reasoning. --tk (t) 17:15, 20 April 2006 (BST)
Objective Neutral Position, Presentation
The article was highly anti-creationist and polemical. Edited to make more NPOV.
Added biographical info, honors, education etc. Added further information on Gitt's thesis. Added books. Grouped controversies Clarified "Director & Professor" as honorary title.71.115.90.62
- You are under the mistaken impression that this is an NPOV website. It is not. We aren't here to discuss the "honors" anyone's been foolish enough to bestow on creationists, where here to rebuke anti-science nonsense.
- And I can assure you, as someone who works with computers every day, "computer scientist" is a bit of an oxymoron. Programming and software design are engineering skills, not scientific ones. Gitt is in no sense of the word a scientist and never has been.
- You state, "Critics counter by claiming that information is generated by mutation and natural selection. This difference is a the heart of the controversy between Evolution and Creation Science. The controversy would be easily resolved were Evolutionist to provide quantitative empirical evidence for each of Gitt's Theorems." Presumably you mean "...evidence against each of Gitt's Theorems", but this has been widely available for centuries. Gitt's assertions aren't theorems in any rational sense of the term. Information occurs spontaneously in all aspects of nature. Pull the top off your salt shaker and dump the contents on the floor. The resulting pile is full of information. If you wanted to reproduce that pile, you would have to record a massive number of positions of salt crystals. All of that is information. Every structure in the natural world has information like this. Gitt and other creationists assert that there exists a special kind of information, but cannot actually demonstrate how to tell it apart from regular information.
- Scientifically, there is no controversy, only a few sad people desperately denying reality because it doesn't support their need to believe.
- --Suttkus 13:25, 5 June 2006 (BST)
