That was far more entertaining, I wonder if anyone suceeded in this?

Yeah. That's what it appears to be: massive recycling of the "materialistic atheism can't account for logic" meme. Of course, as a materialistic atheist (or physicalistic atheist, I guess), I certainly can account for the basis of logic: it's fundamental to the properties of matter and energy, and the relationships between matter and energy.

For instance, the whole non-contradiction example used in what's-his-face's essay is easily explained by materialism. Something can't simultaneously exist and not exist, for instance. That's a fundamental property of matter. It either exists, or it doesn't. That seems pretty simple, and comes directly from materialism. Nor can matter exist in two places at once (such as in his proposed "car-in-the-parking-lot" example). Take that, Lisle!

And he said it couldn't be done.

Logic itself is our own abstraction of these properties and relationships, of course. Ultimately, our logic systems are based firmly in the physical.

The core of Lisle's (and his ardent followers) argument is based on an energetic misunderstanding of what "materialism" means. Of course materialism includes something that is immaterial: relationships between entities that exist. (These entities can be matter or energy.) These relationships are not themselves physical, per se, but are built from combinations of properties, which are themselves very much based on materialism.

It seems Lisle, et al, have created a cartoon strawman, and seem to be content to let that stand for their understanding of atheism.

At least, that's what I'm taking away from both the essay, and AtheismIsNonsense's arguments. AIN has had this explained to him several times, and yet he continues to pretend that we believe in the very limited conception of "materialism" he, Lisle, and Paisley understand.

*Falls off his chair in hysteric laughter*

...Oh, man. Priceless.

I think the first thing I ever asked Paisley to do (while being flippant, admittedly) was provide evidence for a 6,000 year old Earth. His retort was a snooty, "...Well, I don't have to do that, because that's not the worldview I'm espousing! STRAWMAN!"

Will? You're now my favoritest person here. This is just gold.

Clearly your understanding of me is a STRAWMAN!

Let me just check my back pocket for my STRAWMAN!!

Hold on, I have to go out for a second to get some STRAWMAN!!

...

I could do this all day.

What happened to Marty, anyway? He completely gave up arguing.

Argh, so close, Nigel. It's one of my personal frustrations that the 'physical' is so often conflated with the 'material'. Specifically, 'immaterial' does not necessarily mean 'non-physical'.

Even more specifically, those relationships you speak of are not non-physical. When you say that they are "not themselves physical per se", you are adding to the confusion. Yes, they are physical.

One of my first attempts at defining 'information' was to say that information is the physical relationship between matter/energy within spacetime. I meant that quite literally, which is why I said "argh" when you essentially called these relationships (i.e. information) non-physical just then.

Information is absolutely physical. It is crucial to understand this and also to articulate it, because it is this misunderstanding which is largely at the root of the confusion between supernaturalists and naturalists.

So, yes, scientific materialism, aka physicalism, includes something 'immaterial'. Actually, it includes several things which are immaterial. Information is one of them. Others are space, time, and physical forces. None of these are themselves matter or energy, and yet it is proper to say that they exist.

The relationships between entities *are* information. Information is 'immaterial', but it is physical. That is why the word 'materialism' is so often misunderstood, and is just now falling out of favour in deference to the more-accurate word 'physicalism'.

I have found, however, that saying 'information is physical relatinships' is confusing to many people, and so I've gone with the more straightforward 'information is the state of the universe' phrasing. However, they are actually one and the same. The state of the universe *defines* the relationships between entities, and the relationships between entities *define* the state of the universe.

It seems, however, that people don't think that way. That does not jive with our colloquial and intuitive concepts of 'information'. And yet, it is accurate and true. Whenever you talk about information in a colloquial or intuitive sense, you are talking about relationships between entities, and also talking about the state (or a subset of the state) of the universe.

I hope to keep hammering this point away, because it is so important. When people gain a clear conception of how information is a critical part of the universe as we know it, so many other things fall in place conceptually. Questions such as 'what is life?' 'what is consciousness?' etc. fall away and become simply obvious.

Questions such as 'how does the materialist atheist account for X?' also become no-brainers.

Not only that, but we suddenly understand *why* these questions are continually asked, over and over. It is because most people do not have a solid conception of what information is, and so they think that materialism (and physicalism) are 'missing' something.

"Yeah, we're 'just' atoms, but what about our personalities, love, wonder, the 'spiritual', etc.?"

It's all information. Even atoms themselves are information, embodied in matter. An electron alone is not an atom. A proton alone is not an atom. When the two are in a particular *relationship*, when their *state* is in a particular configuration, only *then* are they an atom.

Our personalities are defined by information stored in our brains' neuronal structures. Emotions are particular states and processes (dynamic information) we experience.

The 'spiritual' is a funny thing. When people talk of 'spirit', they are often, unknowingly, speaking of information. The word itself, 'spirit', comes from a word meaning 'breath', and many ancient people thought that people's breath was literally their spirit. When you 'give the spirit', you do so by spreading a certain feeling or emotion through word of mouth and body language, both of which are methods of transmission of information.

The 'spiritual' is an attitude toward mystical information. A spiritual book is a book that uses metaphor, myth, and storytelling to spread inspirational ideas. Evil spirits are often confused with dangerous ideas. To be possessed by a spirit is to be experiencing a trance related to a certain idea or ideal.

I could go on. These 'spiritual' ideas are very vague and hard to pin down, but what they are really referring to is information. This is an intuitive way of describing real events using the supernatural term 'spirit' in place of the natural reality of information. Often this real, natural information is quite literally 'all in their heads', as in the case of a person who claims to have a personal relationship with Jesus.

The word 'spirit' exists and is in use today *precisely* because people do not have a good understanding of information, and lacking this understanding, they grope for an explanation of real phenomena that are actually manifestations of physical information. The word 'spirit' is sufficient for them to fill this gap in understanding, and so they use it. Unfortunately, it is a false idea, just as the idea of a 'life force' (elan vital) is a false explanation for living chemical processes. It is wrong, but it makes intuitive sense when you have no better explanation.

When we finally, one day, present a clear and intuitive understanding of the physical reality of information, 'spirit' and 'spiritual' will finally lose their grip on the populace.

Unfortunately, right now, information theory is both new and difficult for most people to grasp. We have a colloquial understanding of the word 'information' that is stunted and weak. People associate information with human perception and understanding, they do not see it as a fundamental part of the entire universe. They see information in very narrow terms: "I informed the doctor." "I get my information from NPR." "I don't have enough information to make a decision." "This disk holds 6 GB of information."

And yet, everything we deal with on a daily basis is deeply linked with information. This entire website is information. The thoughts in your head are information. The DNA code that defines your cells and body is information. Our governments and corporations are information. Books, TV, movies, radio, etc. are all information, but so too are cities, houses, food, the weather, the Sun, the Earth. Pretty much anything you can think of is matter/energy in particular physical relationships within spacetime.

Personally, I think the rise of computers and computer science has helped us to form more concrete ideas of what information truly is. I think we will finally make a serious breakthrough when we develop a complete cognitive model of consciousness. When a machine can think, it will be hard to deny the reality that consciousness is a form of information processing. When we can read your mind with a machine, know what you're thinking, and detect when you're lying, and what you're feeling, it will be hard for people to deny that we really are biological machines, albeit incredibly sophisticated ones.

Information theory, when fully developed, promises to unite physics with biology (specifically explaining the evolution of information in DNA in terms of information theory and thermodynamics), neurology, psychology, sociology, computer science, economics, politics, etc.

I forgot to ask before -- are you doing a degree in computer science or something?

Really? I thought it was a branch of probability theory. In the late 40s and 50s they were going on about it like it was going to do everything, but it's still just math. I use it in trading:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gambling_and_information_theory

I have an Hon. B.Sc. (4 yrs) in Computer Science. I've been working in software for 10 years. (Man, time flies.)

That's really just scratching the surface.

If you think about it, gambling is just one way of looking at epistemology. They both attempt to make predictions. Science can be seen as 'gambling' on theories. The only difference is that there's no money inherently involved in science.

Imagine wagering with the only goal to be correct in your predictions. That's basically science in a nutshell. Money only comes into it because people have to eat.

Information theory as I'm talking about it is more to do with the nature of the universe itself. Maybe there are some side-benefits in that you can use some of its ideas for gambling, but that's hardly the main thrust of the research.

By the way, you say "it's still just math". But I would say, "math is just a system, and systems are just information."

Y'know what's really cool about information? We don't know shit about it.

Seriously. Information theory is in its infancy. And it is theory: heavy, heavy theory. There's set theory (vital for both databases and thinking about information). There's statistics, which is meta-information theory: statistics help determine the validity of information. You've got proofs for the minimum requirements for a language capable of expressing any algorithm (thank you, Alan Turing). You have proofs that no language can be both complete, and unable to express contradictions (Goedel, with the umlaut). You have theorems that describe estimating errors in calcuations. Fractals came out of information theory research concerning chaos. And so on.

Information theory is one of the most fascinating new fields of research in years. It's already changing how we look at both biology and physics, and I suspect it will affect many other fields of study.

Anyway, that's just me loving on information theory. It really does give me a chubby.

AH-hahahaha!

Haha!

Hehe.

Whoo!

Oh. *tear* It's so true.

No idea. I'm still waiting for the states to try and steal our water as a matter of aquatic manifest destiny.

So terribly, painfully true. The one tv show I've seen (and enjoyed) recently is the new Dr. Who (new=2005). At one point, a couple of characters are nattering away at each other, and the Doctor says, "Will you two quit blogging!"

Guess they didn't like getting owned to the point that multiple sites on the net had devoted themselves to irrefutably ripping apart every claim AIG makes, so they had to make a secret area. If only I knew someone who was a subscriber; since I won't donate to such a group even in the interest of destroying them, unless their destruction is guaranteed of course.

It occurs to me that theists are whiny about the fact that they have to make up arguments to defeat in order to win a debate on the subject matter. The typical response is to point out the fact that they're making things up. This is the backswing. Of course it lacks substance like anything else in the theist argumentative repertoire, but that isn't really surprising.

Agreed. But doesn't the Terminator look strangely friendly in this picture? It almost looks like he's smiling.

"Hi, kids. I'm a Terminator. If you think that someone has touched you in an inappropriate place, make sure to tell your parents. Unless, of course, it is one of your parents, in which case, I'll be right over."

I don't know. I think it's the friendly tilt of the Terminator's head that says after-school-special to me. Stephen Harper's smile is so creepy that I can't even place it.

I've actually believed that Harper was a terminator for a while, so making the terminator connection isn't much of a stretch for me.

Now give it a Grover/Cookie Monster voice and put it on a PSA. "I can put myself together, but you can't."

...

"That's why I shoot you with one of these."

second.  but not bender.  his 'evil' twin.

I walked into this way too late... Great stuff.