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William Dembski on Materialism’s "Tang Problem"


I love this image that William Dembski uses in his new book Being as Communion: A Metaphysics of Information. Materialism tries to imagine reality as if information were not the substrate underlying everything. It extracts information in the same way that the old orange-colored breakfast drink Tang takes real orange juice and extracts the orange “solids,” producing the familiar, vaguely disturbing orange powder.
The result of then reconstructing or reconstituting either the universe or the juice leaves much to be desired. The product — the cosmos with no intelligence underlying its design, or Tang — bears only a crude relationship to the real thing (the real universe, or real orange juice).
An information-based picture of reality, on other hand, is the real thing, much as fresh-squeezed orange juice is.
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David Klinghoffer

Senior Fellow and Editor, Evolution News
David Klinghoffer is a Senior Fellow at Discovery Institute and the editor of Evolution News & Science Today, the daily voice of Discovery Institute’s Center for Science & Culture, reporting on intelligent design, evolution, and the intersection of science and culture. Klinghoffer is also the author of six books, a former senior editor and literary editor at National Review magazine, and has written for the Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Seattle Times, Commentary, and other publications. Born in Santa Monica, California, he graduated from Brown University in 1987 with an A.B. magna cum laude in comparative literature and religious studies. David lives near Seattle, Washington, with his wife and children.

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