The Heavy Hammer of Information
The discovery that all biological systems are information driven has refuted evolution theory. The features and biochemical functions of organisms are defined by prescriptive genetic information. Information is produced by intelligence. Without intelligence being involved in the formation of genetic information, the theory of evolution cannot be correct. In like manner, the fact that humans employ their non-physical intelligence to create information refutes atheism because it provides evidence that we are not merely a complex collection of matter which results in an automaton.
Information is a non-physical entity which is meaningful and purposeful, yet physical processes produce physical products. If we strike a billiard ball in the direction of another, the first ball will strike the second producing a physical product - the movement of the second ball. It is illogical however, to belived that physical processes produce non-physical products or to attribute mental properties to matter. The fact that human intelligence produces information demonstrates that a human is more than just a material automaton, but are also non-physical causal agents. The fact that information is non-physical provides astonishing evidence of what a Christian would call "spirit" so that we are able to create non-physical entities such as information, algorithms, linguistics, aboutness, intentionality, etc. When humans beings produce information, it cannot be that the material processes do so because information is non-physical. These facts clearly discredit the physical materialism, naturalism, and evolutionism of atheism.
When atheists do their apologetics, they consistently borrow concepts from the theist in order to attempt to make atheism seem to be supported by our reality. Atheists often try to remodel reality by re-defining words and concepts so as to remove the inference of the supernatural. I have debated many atheists on subjects relating to information, and it has been my experience that atheists consistently operate the same way when dealing with the evidence that information provides inference of the existence of the human spirit. For the atheist, humans cannot have a spirit since they hold to physical materialism and claim we are merely soulless bags of matter. Atheists understand that if humans have a spirit, then we have reason to believe God exists since our spirits did not create themselves, but were created by a higher spirit - God. This is unacceptable to the atheist, and so they must attempt to remove the evidence of the non-physical cause for the creation of information since atheists are stuck with believing is produced by physical processes. An example of how atheists do this is that when discussing the cause of information, atheists will typically attempt to merge information with it's medium in order to claim information is not no-physical. They understand that if information is non-physical, that it is not comprised of matter, that these must be a non-physical component to a human being which is producing it since it is illogical to believe that physical processes produce non-physical products. The refutation for the atheist is that it is demonstrable that information is not bound to it's medium and therefore not comprised of matter.
The root of the word 'information' is inform for a reason. If there is no informing, no information can be created. Although we colloquially use the word 'information' to describe knowledge that has been recorded upon a medium, such as the genes of our DNA, this technically is not information until and unless it is transcribed by the cell to become useful. The designer of our genetic information must speak and understand the same language as the cell in order for the information to be useful, purposeful, and to be conveyed. Technically, the knowledge recorded in a book with text symbols is not information until the book is read. The designer of the information in the book encodes the book in a language intended for readers who also understand their language, in order for the knowledge of the book to be conveyed. While humans deign information encoded in books, we are not the designers of the information in our genome. Nonetheless, we are justified in saying that the words recorded in a book are information because the purpose of the book, just like the purpose of genetic information, is to be read and used for a purpose, and it was recorded in it's medium for that purpose.
The root word of "information" is the word "inform". The suffix "-ation" indicates an action, process, state, condition, or result. To cause information to come into existence, there must be an action, process, state, condition, or result which causes one party to inform another. There must be the action of informing, or the state of the conveying of information taking place, or the condition of having been been informed, or the result must be that one party has been informed by another.
Knowledge does not adequately define information because knowledge can be squired by observation without any means of informing. The sun is not a causal agent with intelligence and cannot inform anyone of knowledge, since matter does not posesses knowledge. In order for information to exist, knowledge must be conveyed.
In order to attempt to make a case that information is physical, atheists attempt to merge components of information so as to remove the non-physical nature of information. Before explaining this, we need to have a good understanding of what information is. The best definition of information has been provided by Dr. Gitt Werner, President and Professor of the German Federal Institute of Information Technology. He defines it as follows:
"Information is knowledge conveyed from a sender to a receiver using a language agreed upon by both parties."
We can test this, as well as the atheist claim that information is physical, by examining how information is created. An example might be that one star-gazer observes a star and learns that it is distinctly blue in color. As yet, no information has been produced. This gazer has simply gained knowledge that the star is blue. But now the gazer turns to his friend, and pointing to the star, he informs his friend that the star is blue. Information has now been created. The gazer has conveyed knowledge from himself (the sender of the knowledge) to his friend (the receiver of the knowledge) and he did so using a language spoken by both. If one of them spoke and understood only Portuguese and the other only French, the language barrier would prevent the transmission of knowledge, and no information would be created. The sender might as well be babbling incoherently. Using a language both agree upon, the knowledge can be conveyed and the receiver can become informed.
Explaining this further, let's imagine that someone enters an empty room and says, "Dogs.". In this case, there has been no information created, since nobody has been informed of anything. If there were two people present and one said to the other, "Dogs." there is still no information. Information is meaningful and purposeful. Simply saying the word "dogs" conveys no knowledge because of the absence of context, such as a prior question or assertion to which the word "dogs" can provide meaning or purpose. If one person is in an empty room says, "Dogs are animals." there has still been no information produced, because while the statement is meaningful, nobody has been informed of anything. If two people are present and one of them speaks and understands only Yiddish and the other only Italian, and one says to the other, "Dogs are animals.", no information has been produced because a language barrier has prevented the transmission of knowledge, and nobody has become informed of anything. However, if both speak and understand the same language, the knowledge that dogs are animals can be conveyed from the sender to the reciever, and information can be created.
In their attempt to reduce information to matter, atheists try to merge information with it's medium by pointing out that information does not exist unless it is conveyed through a physical medium. We live in a physical world, and nothing happens here, outside of our concious mental processes, without something physical taking place - matter will be moved and energy will be expended. It is understandable therefore that in order to convey information in a physical world we must use a physical medium, unless we were able to communicate strictly by mental processes with another person. If knowledge is to leave our body to go to another person, it is necessary that information be conveyed through a physical medium. However, while information does require a physical medium to be conveyed, the information is not it's medium because information is not bound to it's medium. We can demonstrate this with another example
Let's imagine that a university professor is giving a talk. If the atheist's ideas were correct, then since atheists claim the brain is the seat of human sentience and producer of information, and since they claim information is comprised of matter, the professor would have to share his brain matter with every member of the audience in order to convey information. But does brain matter leave the professor by some mystical superhighway and enter into and become part of the brain of everyone in the audience? Certainly not. It this were true, and if we could physically measure information, we should see a continuous reduction in brain size and intelligence of persons who do a lot of talking on their jobs or lecture regularly, ultimately resulting in that person becoming an imbicil.
Another example is that the knowledge recorded in a book is demonstrably not any part of the book itself since the book can be read aloud, printed from an electronic file onto paper by a computer, or copied by hand. In all cases the information is conveyed to the receiver, but not one atom of matter need be moved from the book to the receiver because the information is not the matter which comprises the book.
Inevitably, secular scientists cannot avoid the implications of the fact that biology is information technology. By itself, this fact has driven much controversy in that the secular scientists have a hard time dealing with the implications this makes for their naturalistic theory of evolution. Many science papers have been published which explore the information properties of genetics. For example, in 2009, the paper "The digital code of DNA." was published in the journal of the National Center for Biotechnology Information, which states in it's abstract,
"The discovery of the structure of DNA transformed biology profoundly, catalyzing the sequencing of the human genome and engendering a new view of biology as an information science. Two features of DNA structure account for much of its remarkable impact on science: its digital nature and its complementarity, whereby one strand of the helix binds perfectly with its partner. DNA has two types of digital information--the genes that encode proteins, which are the molecular machines of life, and the gene regulatory networks that specify the behavior of the genes."
The ever-increasing understanding that biology is information-driven technology is in my opinion the single greatest factor in the downfall of evolution theory. It is inevitable that in order to fully face the this reality, it will become continuously more difficult for proponents of evolution theory to argue that evolution explains the existence and diversity of biological systems. The complete demise of evolutionism is inevitable because of this alone, though because of the stalwart determinism and disdain for Intelligent Design Theory, proponents of evolutionism will only give it up by the process of their death. As one generation of evolutionists yields another, fewer and fewer will be able to promote or even believe in evolution. In the end, evolutionism will dissapear from academia as generations of students who have been able to see and hear the evidence of design in biology find themselves unable to believe that matter in motion is the explanation for their existence.
"Since the 1950s, the concept of information has acquired a strikingly prominent role in many parts of biology." - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
When will the end come for evolutionism? It is difficult to say, but i suspect, as some scientists do, that evolutionism will not survive another century because of the continuous discoveries in microbiology. Perhaps it will come to an end in 50 years, perhaps 100. Nonetheless, it will end. Unfortunately, I do not believe that the world's academics will come to believe that God has created us. I fear that though they will be proponents of Intelligent Design, they will, because of the rebellious nature of the human heart, not be willing to accept that God has made us because of His moral law and authority, but will instead continue to replace God with some other intelligence. Instead of God as our creator, they will be willing to accept another creator, but only so long as that creator's morality is not that of God, which is a frightening, but all-to-likely scenario of how it will play out.
“It was already clear that the genetic code is not merely an abstraction, but also the embodiment of life’s mechanisms; the consecutive triplets of nucleotides in DNA (called codons) are inherited but they also guide the construction of proteins. So it is disappointing, but not surprising, that the origin of the genetic code is still as obscure as the origin of life itself.” John Maddox, “The Genetic Code by Numbers,” Nature, Vol. 367, 13 January 1994, p. 111.