Letters From Grandpa #300

LETTERS FROM GRANDPA

• 300

Dearest grandchild,

I’m sure you have discovered that I have an ulterior motive in writing these letters every week. While each letter is different there is a common theme. I want you to believe in God! I want you to receive Jesus Christ as your personal Savior. I want you to go to heaven! Today’s letter will follow this common theme by asking you to think about “mind” and “information”. Both are real but neither is physical. We consider them together because information only comes from a mind. I have mentioned before the book “Mind and Cosmos” by atheist Thomas Nagel. The subtitle of the book is explosive: “Why the Materialistic Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False”. Nagel, an atheist, correctly questions how “physical” evolution can produce a “non physical” mind. As we have already said, from a non physical mind also comes non-physical information.

For many years scientists have operated high powered radio stations around the world listening for messages from outer space in search of extra terrestrial intelligence. The program is called “SETI”. At the U.S. Naval Observatory a radio receiver was even lifted almost 2 miles above the earth to enhance reception. To date no “information”: has been received. “No information” equals “no mind”. They have received some static or noise, but there is a dramatic difference between “noise” and “information”. Noise can come from a thunder storm, but information only comes from a mind.

The late Jeremiah Andrew Denton Jr. was a POW in Vietnam for almost eight years. In 1966 he was forced to participate in a propaganda television interview that was broadcast in the United States. Feigning trouble with the blinding television lights he used the blink of his eyes to spell out TORTURE in Morse Code. Touche! “Information” is not an accident, it comes from a “mind”.

Sequoyah was the Cherokee genius who invented a written language for his people. Granny has Cherokee roots and some in her family believe they are his distant relatives. The fact that he had at least 5 wives and many children increases that possibility. The point is, language contains information and information comes from a mind. The Cherokee language did not happen by accident. Egyptian hieroglyphics are among the oldest written languages in the world. They date back some 5,200 years. Egypt was a world leader for many centuries but the prophet Ezekiel predicted their decline. He wrote: “It will be the lowliest of kingdoms and will never again exalt itself above the other nations. I will make it so weak that it will never again rule over the nations” (Ez. 29:15). Symbolic of Egypt’s decline is the fact that they forgot how to read their own writing. Just think of it. Vast treasures of information are written in hieroglyphics all over Egypt and the Egyptians forgot how to read them. Finally, in 1799, the Rosetta Stone was discovered which contained a decree from Pharaoh Ptolemy V in three different languages. Since one of them was hieroglyphics scholars now had a key to unlock this forgotten language. Language, of course, can be a vast reservoir of information but it takes a mind to understand it. We repeat, language never happens by accident. It only comes from a mind.

As incredible as it sounds, even air has weight. A balloon filled with air weighs slightly more than an empty balloon. We again repeat, however, that while air is physical, information is not. Information has no weight. When you write a check, for example, the paper has weight, and so does the ink. The information on that check, however, has no weight, yet it is very real. If you have enough money in the bank the “information” on that check can enable you to buy almost anything.

God has blessed us with 26 grandchildren and three have nicknames containing only three letters. (Liz, Eli, and Sam) If you step outside and see a bunch of rocks arranged to spell out one of those three names what is your immediate conclusion? Do you assume that those three letters in correct order came from an accident or a mind? There was a time when scientists naively assumed that the origin of life was so simple that it happened by accident. We now know that the human genome is so utterly complex that it defies our ability to explain it. It contains over three billion base pairs of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA). All of these letters must be arranged in the proper order for us to live. There are 31,556,952 seconds in a year. This means that if you read one letter per second (day and night 365 day a year) it would take approximately 100 years to read 3 billion letters. Some point out that the genome has 3 billion “pairs” contain 4 letters each (A, C. G, and T). This would mean that the actual number of letters is over 12 billion. What do you think? Did the human genome come from an accident or from a mind? I remind you again of the late Antony Flew who was once the most famous atheist in the world. He was convinced by the evidence, however, that there must be a God and wrote his book in 2007: “There is a God, How the World’s Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind”.

It seems that there are only two possibilities. Either matter produced mind, or mind produced matter. The Bible is clear that mind came first. John began his Gospel by writing: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through Him all things were made; without Him nothing was made that has been made. In Him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it” (Jn. 1:1-5).

While the “darkness” does not understand the “Word of God”, I pray that you will!

I love you,

Grandpa Boyce