tage (natural selection). Such differential energy mapping of the genetic code, as well as larger genomic domains, may reflect an energetically resolved and evolved genomic landscape, consistent with a type of differential, energy-driven ‘molecular Darwinism’. This is not sound reasoning! To get one triplet of codons to form would be astonishing, but to get 64 all forming together and then becoming the letters of a non-material language is frankly going against all the known laws of thermodynamics and not based on sound experimental principles. In reality these ‘uphill’ endergonic thermodynamic linkages never occur naturally without biochemical machinery passing the required input energy down very specific pathways. One of these machines is the vitally important protein DNA polymerase for making DNA, and which itself is formed by many interlocking high free energy bonds, and is coded for by the very DNA it is making! The reader is referred to McIntosh (2009, 2013 and 2023) for more discussion on the thermodynamic connection of coded instructions with the underlying substrate. The topdown argument is the only model that makes sense of the formation of an irreducibly complex system where non-material ordering plays a vital role. The carrier codons of the information in living systems are actually kept in their non-equilibrium thermodynamic state by the very presence of the coded information. They would fall apart into disordered equilibrium were it not for the information in the system making them act in this way. IV. INFORMATION AND THE ROLE OF LANGUAGE A. Language Baumgardner and Lyon (2015, 2017) have shown that language in its own right defeats the notion of philosophical naturalism. Baumgardner (2022) in his lecture on language made some very insightful observations concerning the way the linguistic nature of DNA is similar to all known human language and especially the very precise language of mathematics. That all language is non-material is evident: What is language? Language is simply encoded meaning. How is meaning encoded? First small snippets of meaning are assigned to a set of tokens or symbols, which we usually refer to as words. The resulting set of words forms what is usually referred to as the vocabulary. Second, a set of rules, usually referred to as the grammar, is specified by which elements from the vocabulary may be joined together to create more complex meaning structures ……. Language is a non-material reality. Because meaning is abstract and non-material, so is language. Language is merely encoded meaning. This is why the meaning a linguistic message conveys does not depend on its material carrier. A message, if reliably encoded and transmitted, is the same whether it is via paper and ink, on a magnetic disk, on a plastic CD, or chiseled on a rock. Meaning is independent of matter! A linguistic message, when reliably transmitted, is identical whether it is carried by acoustic waves through the air, relayed electronically, faxed, emailed, encrypted, sent through the mail on a DVD, or carried via smoke signals. The message has an identity and a reality independent of its material carrier. So that the very fact that coded tokens or symbols are being used to represent reality is itself a strong argument against the notion of emergence of such a means of communication. The very idea of transcendent meaning indicates a reality beyond the physical / material universe. It is significant that the origin of all language fundamentally continues to be a major hurdle for evolutionists to explain. Penner (2000, p. 35) writes “The crucial and perplexing problems of language and speech present one of the greatest unanswered challenges to the evolutionary hypothesis.” Noam Chomsky, one of the greatest thinkers in this whole area of speech and language, asserted that it is absurd to think that language evolved from simpler systems (Chomsky 1968, p. 62): Human language, it appears, is based on entirely different principles [than animal communication]. This, I think is an important point, often overlooked by those who approach human language as a natural, biological phenomenon; in particular it seems rather pointless, for these reasons, to speculate about the evolution of human language from simpler systems - perhaps as absurd as it would be to speculate about the ‘evolution’ of atoms from clouds of elementary particles. As far as we know, possession of human language is associated with a specific type of mental organization, not simply a higher degree of intelligence. Probably the most precise example of language is mathematics, where logic is expressed using representative symbols. It is real, exists, is powerful and communicates abstract concepts which rightly used, enables design of bridges, engines, planes, spacecraft and so forth. Baumgardner (2022) states “Mathematics involves the assignment of meaning to sets of symbols and specification of a set of rules or axioms for manipulating those symbols.” This leads into the whole issue of logic and rationality that we touched on in section IIIA above. Logic is best expressed by the precision of mathematics and has led some mathematicians to the conclusion that the human rational consciousness is not of itself algorithmic in nature (Penrose 1990, 2005). Our own minds are not therefore “algorithmically-controlled robots on legs”. The Biblical Christian viewpoint is robustly consistent with this, and the language of rational communication points strongly to a Creator. In a similar way, the language of DNA involved in the engineering within the cell is no different, and requires the brilliance of a Mind to design such non-material organizational coding. B. Levels of Information What then defines the information within living systems? To suggest that there is a material explanation along the lines of abiogenesis is denied by the thermodynamics and especially by the Thermodynamic principle (2) above for non-isolated systems. Gitt, Compton and Fernandez (2013) defined information as …a symbolically encoded, abstractly represented message conveying the expected action and the intended purpose. As quoted in full above, Baumgardner (2022) states “The message has an identity and a reality independent of its material carrier.” Information is essentially defined as non-material coded instructions. Furthermore Gitt (1989, 2000) laid the foundations of the view that MCINTOSH Language, codes, & interaction with thermodynamics 2023 ICC 322
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