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NO INTELLIGENT CREATOR OF THE UNIVERSE -- Bill Birdsall 7/27/06 In the same way that one cannot have a brick

house before having bricks to construct it with, one cannot have intelligence without first having some prerequisites. What are the prerequisites of intelligence? Intelligence deals with the management of information. Therefore, in order to have intelligence, one must first have information and a way to manage it. Also, if the ability to think is part of intelligence, it is important to have memory in order to store information preparatory to the thinking process. Without these prerequisites one cannot have intelligence. Information is intangible but it is always associated with a physical vehicle, which is tangible. One cannot directly see or touch information. For example, a book contains information, but one cannot directly see the information it contains; a fairytale, or the history of a people, for example. What is seen is the book, the paper and ink, the physical vehicle that carries the information in encoded form. The code is found in the patterns of ink that compose the letters and words of some language. If the ink patterns change, the information they carry changes also. The pattern is the key to the information, and in order to have a pattern one needs a physical vehicle to hold the pattern. Some examples of vehicles for information are genes, computer discs, and the sound or radio waves used in communication. One cannot scrape information off of a book or other vehicle, making a pile of invisible information separate from the physical vehicle. Information is stored and moved by means of physical vehicles, but information is not physical material. The laws of nature that dictate the behavior of physical materials do not dictate the behavior of information. Information can be truthful, but it can also be mistaken information, lies, or fantasies. Information exists in a world of its own, even though it depends on the physical world for its vehicles and for its existence. The physical states of matter are: solid, liquid, gas, and plasma. There are also waves, such as those of light, sound, and radio. One can put encoded patterns, which carry information on each of these physical vehicles, but due to their nature they behave in different ways. Due to the random motion of their elements, liquids, gases and plasmas are not able to hold patterns from one moment to the next. The information encoded on them is lost when the encoded patterns are lost. Waves travel and are lost to the user because of distance. The solid state of matter is the only state that is able to store patterns with information and stay in one place from one moment to another. For that reason, the solid state of matter is the only state of matter useful for purposes of memory. Memory is the localized storage of information over time. If one puts the information here today, it can be found here tomorrow for its continued use. Brains are composed of

solid-state neurons. Because of that, our brains are capable of memory. Computers also have memory due to their solid-state components. When one dies and the solid-state neurons turn into liquids and gasses, all the information of a lifetime that they contain is lost. Information depends on the existence of matter and energy for the physical vehicles that store patterns and permit its symbolic representation. Therefore, matter and energy are prerequisites of information. Information is a prerequisite of intelligence. Therefore, matter and energy are prerequisites of intelligence. One cannot have an intelligent creator of matter and energy because that would put intelligence before its prerequisites. Although nobody knows for sure how matter and energy originated, logically it was not due to the intervention of an intelligent god. THE ORIGIN OF INFORMATION: Nobody knows how matter and energy originated, but they exist and the universe behaves in a somewhat predictable manner because of their nature. Because of gravity, material tends to cluster and over time the chemical elements have evolved. The result is the universe that we know, full of galaxies, stars, and planets. All of this evolved without any intelligent control. It has to have been that way because until the evolution of life, we do not find patterns in nature that symbolically store information. There was no information before encoding existed. The first time that we find patterns for the encoding of information is when something like DNA appeared, which permitted replication using available elements in the environment. Errors sometimes appear when information is copied from one vehicle to another. After the first replicable life forms evolved, copy errors resulted in mutations. The mutations resulted in the varieties of life forms that we have today. During this long process of evolution, neurons and brains developed, which permitted an evolution in the kinds of information that could be encoded in patterns and used. Brains permitted an evolution of intelligence. Now, brains have created computers, and an evolving field of artificial intelligence. THE THOUGHT PROCESS: Thinking is a processing of information. To store information prior to processing, as a prerequisite of memory, one needs the solid state of matter. In the case of the brain, neurons satisfy this requirement. To process information stored in the brains solid-state matter one needs a traveling element to serve as a messenger. This function is performed by the electrochemical signals in the system. A PET scan of the brain while it works shows this activity. The activity observed represents the conscious and subconscious mind. When the brain dies, this activity stops.

Although the dead brain is no longer capable of thought because of the cessation of movement of its traveling vehicles, the electrochemical signals, one could imagine that information in memory might still exist in the patterns of neurons. It is when the brain dies and the solid-state neurons decompose and turn into liquids and gasses that all possibility of memory is lost. In computers, the corresponding components are the hard drive and the electrical signals. When the electrical current is shut down, the computer turns off, and the processing of information stops. This is similar to the death of a brain. However, since the hard drive does not decompose, and the electrical current can be reintroduced, this death is not permanent. IS THERE INFORMATION THAT DOES NOT DEPEND ON PATTERNS? There are people who believe that everything has information, even though it is not in encoded patterns. They believe that everything that could possibly be said about something already exists as information. They are mistaken. The key to this illusion about un-encoded information is the mind of the observer. Human brains are not only capable of receiving encoded information. They can also produce it. An author, for example, can produce a novel that is completely composed of fantasy. The process of his thoughts is silent, and the information appears in coded form, words, as though by magic. The author does not receive information from the void; he creates it himself. As an example of the illusion of something having information, lets think about the temperature of a glass of water. If the temperature that comes to the mind is 60 F, we are already dealing with a number, a concept of temperature (something comparative), and a scale of temperature, all of which were invented by humans. How is it that a glass of water is going to have this information package without the intervention of the human mind? It is more likely that a human explored the water with a thermometer, another human invention, and arrived at that number through his own conclusions. The information about temperature is not a gift to us made by the water. The water does not have that information to give. Furthermore, since no thermometer is perfect, that number will probably not be perfect on further examination. Perhaps, 59.999 F would be more exact. If the water knows its temperature, why would it give us false information? There is no information transfer from the water to us. There is a creation of this information by the observer. Furthermore, since no two things are exactly equal, within the glass all of the molecules of water are going to be a little different in their levels of energy and temperature. Perhaps the warmest water is to be found higher up in the glass. Under these nonuniform circumstances, the glass of water can only have an average temperature, one that

is not detected by a thermometer placed at a specific location in the glass. While we have been thinking about this, the water has been cooling. It doesnt have the same temperature from one moment to the next. It appears that the universe, which is always changing, is not capable of storing this type of un-encoded information. It does not have any memory for it. Furthermore, there is no way to transmit this kind of unencoded information without using encoded information. One cannot think with it. Unencoded information is not yet information. If it deserves any consideration, it deserves another name so as to not get confused with the kind of information we use. That which is is, and it has no name. If we want information about how things are, we have to invent it, just as we invent the names. As soon as we recognize information as information it is already in code, and we are authors of the code. WHAT ABOUT THE SOUL? Is there any way to directly experience ones own soul? Some people believe that the soul is immortal and punished or rewarded by God after death for the sins or good things we do in life. God would have to be crazy and cruel to punish a soul if the soul did not have consciousness to appreciate the punishment and memory to remember the reasons for punishment. If souls exist, one would imagine that they have consciousness and memory. As we already know, when the solid-state elements of the dead brain decompose, turning into liquids and gasses, the brain loses all memory. If a soul has memory and is capable of surviving death it must use a different system of memory than the electrochemical one used by the brain. If the soul can survive death, it should be able to survive nonfatal accidents. Still, in many cases there is amnesia, loss of memory when there is trauma to areas of the brain. If the soul and its memory system remain sound after accidents, then there should always be a backup memory for when the brain fails. There should never be a case of amnesia. Since there are cases of amnesia, one can deduce that there is no backup memory in the soul, or that we are completely out of contact with our own souls. We do not have access to this supposed memory base. We do not have direct experience of our souls, and there is no proof that we have one. We are a mystery to ourselves, because as observers we cannot completely observe ourselves as we observe, but a soul with memory is logically not part of the mystery. The soul is not what some people think they are. IN CONCLUSION: There never was an intelligent creator of the universe.

Religion, as a reason for prejudice, and as an excuse for war is crazy.

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