Is atheism a scientific perspective?

[Angrboda]

Define 'define' so that I know what definitions count. Also please define 'rigorously' so I can meet that criterion. I'm joking of course. Maybe instead of getting hung up on the quality of the definitions (which I did provide), maybe deal with the concept of the argument. 

Why? Because your definitions are vapid and empty. Let's start with your definition of specified. "The specified part is indicating that the information is used to accomplish a desired function." Function is in the eye of the beholder. If we are talking about the circular pattern that a fairy ring makes, it has a function in the metabolism of the fungus. If you are talking about DNA, then it has the function of guiding the production of proteins. These are metaphors for what is actually going on. In reality, all you have are chemical sequences doing what chemicals do. One can use adaptive terminology such as 'X' is a function of 'Y' about practically anything, from the circular pattern of the fairy ring to the 'function' of plants in a swampland ecosystem. Yet not all of these indicate design by an intelligence. So the fact that it contains 'specified information' under your definitions really says nothing about whether the article was intelligently designed or not. All it shows is the flexibility of the human mind in applying metaphor to physical systems. Such talk is implicitly teleological, so it implies that the function was specified by someone, a designer. So to claim that the fairy ring has a function is to implicitly say that it was designed, which is bollocks. So all you are saying is effectively, "this system was designed" by calling it specified under that definition.

You say that information is defined "as that which is conveyed by a sequence of things." Conveyed? By what and to whom? This is more implicitly teleological talk. DNA doesn't convey the production of proteins to a protein making machine, it interacts with chemicals in the cell. And what is the 'that' which is conveyed? Apples? Oysters? Ideas? Calling the sequential pattern in DNA information is just a subtle way of begging the question.

So you have two definitions, both of which refer to teleological metaphors which implicitly imply that the article is designed. You might as well have just skipped the argument and declared, "They're designed because I say they are." Your definitions of information and specified don't point to anything concrete that can be identified purely from a description of the thing you're referring to. Your definitions are too high level to be of use for anything beyond cloaking your assumptions.