First, I appreciate your responsiveness. Please do not mistake my insistent intrusion as a sign of ideaological aggression. I enjoy discussing these subjects with disembodied minds because there is no room for preconceived notions based on visual input.
Now, to the good stuff . . . . Your first sentence sums up the single biggest barrier to the human condition. Just like the Tower of Babel story, our language is often a shadow of our thoughts and intentions and has led to many misunderstandings. Allow me to clarify.
I am by no means a scientific type. I have a passion for knowledge and have given some time to studying a variety of subjects. Physics is one of these.
The first Law of Thermodynamics states that energy can neither be created nor destroyed, only converted. Energy is the information carrier for the universe, nay, it is the universe. I used to picture the universe as a container but, the more I read in to quantum theory and string theory, the more I realized that the universe is an expression of this thing called Energy. This means that all information for the universe to "Be", is here since all of the energy contained in the universe was released at the time of the big bang. This leads me to believe that all possibilities exist. It has been theorized that matter pops in to and out of existence all of the time. So, even non-existence is a possibility and now it becomes a game of probability.
I believe the underlying spirit of several of your arguments is a question of the eistence of free will (this is a sudden guess, because I guessed it . . . suddenly). In a universe where all "information" exists, free will has no place. However, when probability becomes the governor of information, you can see choices (especially "minor" ones) as the building blocks of our lives.
"Ineffectiveness of information" is a function of our ignorance not a testament to existence. We can not calculate where or when a star will form yet this does not stop a star from forming. The information to complete this process is present and it is only a matter of probability.
In any case, let's get back to that God thing. As a species, we have always tried to explain our "condition." Spirituality was the first attempt and languages were invented to describe these "explanation." Religion was the second, more "organized" attempt. Science is the third, and it also has it's languages. Many, many languages and all disparate. This is why an atheist can not understand the "religious" explanation and ignores the spiritual (typically.) Even among scientists , chasms have existed. Theoreticians used to descibe the luminiferous aether as the substance through which all matter "flowed", which was ridiculed by those coming of age and professing we move through an vaccum, yet they seem to have returned to the notion of a lumineferous aether only now they call it dark matter and dark energy. If we are to pay attention, we would realize they were all describing the same thing (which already exists) only refining their language and enhancing their picture, which is still completely obfuscated.
To profess Mr. Darwin's theory as the ultimate explanation for life on this planet is to ignore an important fact. Mr. Darwin only describes "events" in his theory. He does not explain who or what pushed the scales of probability to tip in favor of life on an otherwise lifeless and violent planet. After all, "we live in a perposterous universe" (Sean Carroll, University of Chicago, based on astronomical observations.) He never addresses why species simply "appear" in the fossil record or how they develop their complex behaviors, except to say they "evolve." Why is self awereness needed for survival? We now know of several species besides our own which we consider self aware. How did the first plant figure out that bees like nectar? How did the first leaf cutter ant figure out that by expanding massive amounts of their energy cutting leaves, bringing them back to their nests and cultivating fungus to eat is the best method of survival? How did they know the fungus would grow on the leaves if they peed and puked on them?
I have faith in the inexplicable because I know we don't know "bleep." The phone companies know how to get the phones to work but, that does not mean they know why instant communication is possible. I was taught nothing was faster than light, yet quantum entanglement say that information can and does travel instantly. An "entangled" pair of particles can affect each other's behavior instantly even if they are at opposite ends of the universe!
I guess what I'm saying is there is sooooooo much we don't understand that discounting the existence of a Creator (not deity) based on the shenanigans of some who profess they know god personally is not grounded in logical deduction, only on the speculations of a few visionaries. Theoretically we should never have evolved not only because the universe itself is anomaly, but because we are completely unadapted to physical life on this planet. Even our "closest" relatives are completely independent of their self awareness when it comes to survival. Apes are completely capapble of sustaing their physical life. We are a weak species. The sun gives us skin cancer and the cold gives us frost bite. Why did evolution go that route?
Science is wonderful but, it doesn't explain anything. It only describes what we observe. So, why do we observe? After all, why would small bits of the universe need to study other bits of the universe?
Ouch . . . I think I just got carpal tunnel.
Let me respond in list form for ease of discussion:
1) I agree that everything boils down to energy (considering matter to be an expression of energy and discounting empty space). I agree that energy is the information carrier for the universe. However, you seem to be using these to facts to imply that energy and information are equivalent in the philosophical sense, and I disagree with that. The umpteen-billionth digit of pi exists as a piece of information, even if it has never been calculated and is not stored as energy anywhere in the universe.
2) I believe you said in a previous note that you do not believe in randomness. In this note, you mention the quantum possibility of matter appearing or disappearing. Don't these two statements contradict each other?
3) If the universe is deterministic, there can still be free will. It's a matter of definition of terms.
4) Even if you say that there is no free will in a deterministic universe, probability interacting with information on a quantum level does not change the situation because quantum probabilities are not choices -- they are random events.
5) You are right that our inability to calculate something does not mean that it won't happen. However, this does not imply to me that the time an place of every star formation that will ever take place now exists as information.
6) I disagree with your theory that spirituality lead to religion which lead to science. I think it far more likely that science (as an attempt to quantify and explain the world) came first, and that religious/spirituality was the result of trying to find explanations without sufficient information.
7) I disagree with the statement that atheists typically can't understand religious explanations and ignore the spiritual. It is true that this is sometimes the case, but I feel that it is an overgeneralization.
8) Regarding the aether, this was an entirely different concept from dark matter and dark energy.
9) You are correct that evolution doesn't explain where life came from. It doesn't pretend to. It doesn't address why species "simply 'appear'" in the fossil record, because they don't. It does, very specifically, address how complex behaviors arise. It doesn't imply that awareness is necessary, and in fact explicitly predicts that flowers attracting bees, etc., came about without awareness.
10) Einstein's theory states that messages can't be sent faster than the speed of light. To date, so far as I am aware, quantum entanglement does not contradict this. "Instant communication" is only possible if you consider the collapsing of an entangled probability envelope to be communication, but that would be using a different definition of "communication" than is used by scientists.
11) I disagree that "we are completely unadapted to physical life on this planet." If that were the case, we wouldn't be here. At most you can say that we are not optimally adapted, but this is exactly what evolution predicts (as opposed to creationism which, I would think, would more likely result in an optimal design).
12) You say that science doesn't explain anything but only describes what we observe. I disagree, because science also makes predictions about what we will observe in the future.
