Think of water boiling in a kettle. Will you be concentrating the molecules around the element or dispersing them? It doesn’t matter whether its an open or closed system. Where you have red hot lava boiling sea water, what will happen to the molecules in the sea water?
First, as water evaporates, whatever minerals are dissolved in it would condense, so I don't think your example makes the point you want it to make. But more importantly, oceans are not a boiling kettle. Colder water circulates down into rock, minerals dissolve into it, and it circulates back up as it is heated, carrying minerals with it. As the water cools, it cannot dissolve minerals as easily, and they will condense out of the water. This is basic chemistry that 2nd-graders do as science projects in school, making salt crystals and rock candy from sugar.
As for what happens to these minerals, you can see with your own eyes. There are giant vents reaching up from the ocean floor. What do you think these vents are made of if you think minerals magically disperse perfectly into the entire ocean? Tell me what those vents are made of, how do they grow, and how they last for thousands of years. Here's a hint: If water carries minerals up from oceanic rock faster than it can dissolve into ocean water, what do you think happens to the excess minerals? Please be as specific as you can in your answer.
You say to cofty, "hydrothermal vents would be the last place on earth where life would originate... As I said before, it probably one of the most inhospitable places on the planet." Why are hydrothermal vents inhospitable? According to you, minerals and heat instantaneously disperse over the entire volume of the world's oceans, so why would there be a harmful concentration? Think about what you're saying. You yourself have admitted that things concentrate around these vents.
You don't see a problem with cause and effect, I do. What was the first cause?
The correct questions is, "Why should we think there was a first cause?" You don't get to just assume a first cause when it is not required by our current understanding of physics. Causes require effects, and effects require causes. This is trivially true because of how the words are defined. But that doesn't mean that everything that happens is either a cause or an effect. There can also be "uncaused events." So before I can tell you what was the first cause, you need to demonstrate there was a first cause, then we can begin to investigate it.
[Edit: I'm going to save us a little time and warn that if you say you get to proclaim an exception to your "law" of C&E, then I get to have an exception, as well.]
Remember I said there are five prerequisites of UI. 1) Sender/receiver, emphasis on an intelligent sender. 2) Cosyntics (code + syntax). 3) Semantics; 4) Pragmatics; 5) Apobetics. If one is missing, it doesn’t qualify as UI.
Yes, and remember I said you're making this up, so it's not important if something qualifies under a made-up definition. If you need to make up new terms, then keep changing your definition as the discussion progresses, this should be a huge signal to you that your argument is failing.
Recall the four variations of information flow in terms of sender -> recipient: (I) volitional -> volitional. (II) volitional -> non-volitional. (III) non-volitional -> volitional. (IV) non-volitional -> non-volitional.
Your initial definition indicated that (I), (II), and (III) qualified as UI. Now you've changed your definition to only (I) or (II). Very well. DNA and other cell mechanisms still do not meet your new definition because there is no volitional sender of the information. If you can demonstrate--or even provide the slightest hint of--volition in cell functions, you will be rich and famous beyond your wildest dreams, and your name will forevermore be the most famous name in fundamentalist religious circles behind only Jesus and Muhammed. Just as tree rings do not count as UI under your definition, cell functions do not count, either.
Finally, this was addressed to cofty, but I can't help myself. You say, "complex living things come only from other living things... This is summarized in the phrase Omne vivum ex vivo, Latin for 'all life [is] from life.'" Congratulations, you've just proved that God is not alive. I take back what I said earlier. Your name is not going to go down in history exalted only behind Jesus and Muhammed, your name is going to be vilified only behind Satan and Shaitan. You've, by your own unassailable logic, proven that God cannot exist.
