TRANSCENDENT ASPECTS OF LIVING THINGS
By Craig Paardekooper

1. FREE-WILL

EVERY EVENT HAS A CAUSE
Every event that takes place , occurs at a particular time because it wastriggered at that time by a prior event . It does not simply pop out ofnowhere without a prior cause.
AN INFINITE REGRESSION
However the trigger itself must also have a prior cause, so we have aninfinite regression of triggers.
THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF AN INFINITE REGRESSION
Time moves in one direction from cause to effect. If an effect requires
an infinite number of prior causes, then it will never happen, since an
infinite number of steps must be taken before it can happen. So any
effect that does happen must have only a finite number of prior causes.
A FIRST CAUSE
If there are only a finite number of prior causes, then each chain ofevents must begin with a first cause.
TWO TYPES OF CAUSES
In our everyday life we are aware of two types of causes – causes that
require prior causes, and causes that are first causes.
WHAT IS A FIRST CAUSE
A first cause is something that is self-caused. It is something withautonomy. We are familiar with first causes in our everyday life because
any act of free will is a first cause. We are not compelled to act by any
prior triggers, but choose to act – we make a choice between
alternatives. The nature of a first cause is free will or self- causation.
PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY IMPLIES A FIRST CAUSE
We can only be held responsible for our actions if we chose thoseactions, rather than being compelled by prior causes. Responsibility
implies freedom to choose – freedom from causal determinism.
THREE LAWS
1. Law of causation - every event must have a cause unless it is an actof free will - in which case it is self-caused. In our everyday
experience , self caused events are acts of volition or free will.

2. Law of Entropy. An event is less than its cause since useful energy isalways lost.
3. Law of Conservation . When the energy of a cause is transformed into
an event the total energy is conserved.
FIRST CAUSES ARE TRANSCENDENT
Self-caused events occur in time but are not determined by anything priorwhich means that they are free from any form of determinism, including
physical causes. This means that self-causation is transcendent. In
everyday language we would call it “spiritual”. Every act of selfcausation is a minor miracle.
WHICH SPECIES HAVE FREEWILL ?
Many animals exhibit free will. The extent to which they can express that
freewill is determined by their cognitive capacity, communication
capacity and their motor capacity. A creature that has high cognitive
capacity, is able to communicate their intention, and has high control
over fine movements is able to demonstrate free will more clearly.
If this is the case, then the expression of freewill is limited by ourbodies, so a person with brain damage, or suffering from complete
paralysis will have diminished expression of freewill.

2. INFORMATION

There is another aspect of our lives that is transcendent besides freewill. I refer to information.
NOT REDUCIBLE TO A PHYSICAL MEDIUM
Information is not reducible to the properties of the medium that holds
it – just as the writing in a book cannot be reduced to the chemicalproperties of the pages upon which it is written.
So information stands out distinct from any physical medium - as if it
was added on / written on to that medium. There is no causal relationshipbetween a medium and the information it holds.
Consider DNA. It contains information necessary for the construction oflife, yet the order of the bases A, C, T and G is completely independentof the chemical properties of the DNA. The order does not arise from themedium. Rather the medium has been organised by some outside influence inorder to convey the information.
INFINITE VARIABILITYAnd the information that DNA can hold is infinitely variable, so theinfluence producing it must be infinitely free to vary - matter simply
lacks this ability to vary infinitely, since its states are constrainedby causation. The only thing we know with infinite freedom to vary isfreewill.

Consider a book. It does not simply consist of a single repeating letteror word, but can be non-repetitive and non-random, and vary infinitely
from sentence to sentence, from page to page, from chapter to chapter.
SPEECHA spoken word is a pattern of physical vibrations in space, but vibrating
atoms need not form THOSE words - they could be formed into any word. Thewords are produced by a living body, but there is nothing in the physicalstructure of that body that necessitates those particular words.
We experience our words as spoken out of choice or free will - so oureveryday experience shows us that each word is an act of volition acting
upon a physical medium. An act of free will. We are the authors of ourwords - not some blind biological reaction.
SYMBOLS
Words, writing, and DNA embody information that are not about themselves.
Information is about something other than itself. If information werebiologically determined, then it would only tell us about its biologicalcause - and tell us nothing about the subject of the information.
Information is symbolic - so it refers to something other than itself andother than the biological process that produces it.
TRUE OR FALSE
For this reason, information can be true or false. If information weremerely the expression of a biological process then such processes wouldproduce random or biologically fixed information that was independent of
truth or falsity. It can only be true or false if it is about somethingother than itself.
PURPOSEFUL
Information is purposeful. DNA is instructions for arriving at a definedend. It organizes matter to form life. Words are organization of soundwaves to form a meaningful speech. This is different from physicalobjects which are driven by prior causes. In contrast, information isshaped by purpose - which is a cause "in the future".
INFORMATION IS NON-PHYSICAL
Information is non-physical and has no dimensions. It is written onto
physical media but not a property of that media. It can be translated toa different code or a different media, and is unaffected by time, mass oranything physical.
“Information is not a physical dimension. Information describes theknowledge or data conveyed through various means, but it does not have aphysical manifestation or occupy physical space. Physical dimensions,such as length, width, height, and time, are measurable properties of thephysical world, whereas information is a non-physical property that canbe encoded, stored, and transmitted through physical media, but it is notitself a physical dimension.”

ENTROPY AND INFORMATION DEGRADATION
Rather than creating information, natural processes tend to degrade it.
All information on physical media is subject to degradation, or noise inthe signal. Genetic information stored in DNA is subject to random noise(point mutations) that scramble letters of the code causing disease andcancer. The greater the time, the greater the amount of noise or damage,leading to eventual extinction. Life is not evolving, it is going
extinct.
ONLY MINDS CAN CREATE CODES
Only an intelligent mind can create codes (like natural language or DNAcode) and the original purposeful information stored upon it. Those whodeny a spiritual reality blind themselves to this fact of life.

SUMMARY
BEHAVIOURAL TRANSCENDENCE
In our every day lives we initiate myriad actions that exhibit free will.
Such freewill is a transcendent quality because it operates independentof any prior biological cause.
PHYSICAL TRANSCENDENCE
Our bodies are constructed from information encoded in DNA – informationthat is independent of the properties of the medium upon which it iswritten and cannot be explained from the chemical properties of thatmedium.
So there are many facets of life that are transcendent – both physicaland behavioural.