We look up in the sky and see the constellation Orion. Is it "information"? Or to put it differently, is it a message? Or is it a random configuration of stars that appears to look like a man shooting a bow? To believe it is a message presupposes the existence of the messenger. This belief cannot be tested through observation or experiment - it is not falsifiable - thus is not scientific.

Most people would agree that Orion is a random configuration of stars, not a message, not a form of art created by an unknown messenger or artist. But thousands of years ago - nay, even hundreds of years ago - this was not the case. Back then, even the most intelligent and rational men could not imagine that artwork in the sky could be anything but the hand of an ultimate creator. Has human intelligence improved since then? Certainly not! Even today the intellects of ages past shine so brightly they dazzle us.

Let's modernize the example by supposing a constellation expressing the number pi to 20 decimal places. Though this would seem far less probable than something like Orion, it too could be a random configuration of stars. It is a difference only in degree, not in kind. Such a belief presupposes a messenger who created the message, but is not testable through experiment or observation. Also, such a belief is not logically necessary, as the phenomenon is explainable - despite how unlikely it might seem - in terms of natural processes. Thus, such a belief is non scientific.

As long as human beings have existed, we have always striven to understand the world around us. Toward this end, we model the universe with abstract concepts. Phenomena that challenge the model force us to rethink our understanding, reworking or replacing the model. But let us not confuse the model with reality itself. An incorrect model is often a useful tool. Inded, if correctness were a necessary condition of utility, no model could ever be useful because no model can ever be proven correct.

For example, celestial navigation was originally based on the assumption that the stars revolved around the Earth. This is incorrect, yet it got mariners to their destinations for thousands of years. Newtonian mechanics is also incorrect, but the airplanes and spaceships designed under its principles still fly. It is one thing to say that quantum mechanics and relativity are useful models for understanding the universe. It is another thing entirely to say the the universe IS quantum mechanical or relativistic. Inded, such a belief is an unprovable leap of faith that contradicts a long history of successively newer and improved models of reality.

It sometimes happens that the best theory anyone can come up with, based on experimentation and observation alone, is spiritually unsatisfying, counterintuitive, or incomplete. But a rational mind must accept that this does not justify non scientific explanations. A theory must be falsifiable by repeatable experimentation in order to be scientific. This does not mean it must be falsifiable given our current knowledge and technology, but that there is a repeatable experiment or observation that could in principle falsify it, even if is beyond our current ability to perform. An untestable, unfalsifiable premise is not science - it is philosophy, imagination, or fantasy.

This leads to an amusing irony. Those who clamor for GOD, who see the ghost in the machine, often accuse more scientific minds of arrogance. But the exact reverse is true - the believers are the ones who invent their own imaginative explanations for phenomena they do not understand, while more scientific minds have the intellectual maturity and humility to accept their own ignorance and incomplete state of knowledge. However unsatisfying the best scientific explanation might be, it is still intellectually superior to fantasy.

Take this analogy to life itself - DNA. Some believe that DNA is "information" or "programming" that orders life. They refer to DNA as "information" and specifically distinguish it from the chemicals and processes that realize it. Then they use this to demonstrate that there must be an ultimate messenger - e.g. an intelligent designer, a.k.a. GOD. But this is tautalogical - calling anything "information" already begs the question. If it really is "information" then it must by definition mean something, and meaning presupposes a messenger.

That we call it information says nothing about whether it actually is information. Our model may certainly be incorrect even while being useful. Assuming that DNA is "information" does indeed make life processes easier to comprehend. But that comes as no surprise. Indeed, the distinction between "information" and the machine it "directs" and "orders" is an artificial model we create precisely for that purpose - to facilitate understanding. It says absolutely nothing about life itself. The machine in question: e.g. the life process itself - is (at least) a physical/chemical phenomena. Like the universe itself, the life process cares nothing about human understanding or the models we might invent to understand it. "Information" is merely an abstract concept we create to better understand the machine.

In short, let us not confuse our model with reality itself.

The supposition of intelligent design is not a testable premise. No evidence that we discover, past, present or future, could ever disprove it. No matter what we discover about the life process, one could always say that whatever it is, was there by design. As an untestable, unfalsifiable premise is not science - it is philosophy, imagination, or fantasy. Furthermore, speaking pragmatically, anyone who believes in the idea of intelligent design must explain why the intelligent designer gave horses vestigial toes and whales and snakes vestigial leg bones.

This is not to say that the ghost in the machine does not or cannot exist. Whether or not there is a ghost in the machine, the machine itself must function according to natural processes. The goal of science is to discover and understand those natural processes. Perhaps there is something more, perhaps there is not. But even if there is, inserting it into our model for the life process is logically unnecessary and only hinders true scientific understanding.

Thus it is not surprising to see that some people find a ghost in the machine of life. One always finds something exactly where he put it. The ghost is nothing more than what they themselves put there, in the assumptions behind the model they use to understand and explain it.