Information - The Immaterial Reality

In much of the debate between ID and Evolution advocates, the focus is on the mathematical complexity of the genetic code.  ID advocates point out that the sequences of chemicals arranged to carry the information that makes life possible are so detailed and vast that no amount of time could account for the unguided arrangement of even the most basic chemical structures of proteins.  Steven Meyer's recent tome suggests that the random combination of chemicals necessary for even the basic building blocks of the genetic code are so unlikely to have arisen by random processes as to be equivalent to finding a single marked atom blindfolded in an area equivalent to size of the known universe.  ID does not then merely resort to a "God of the gaps" argument where "design" wins by default, as his critics charge, nor is it merely an argument about "chance".  Rather, the suggestion is that the order of the genetic code is analogous to virtually everything else that we know to have been designed, therefore design is the best explanation.  (More)

I recently read an old book from the seventies by A.E. Wilder-Smith that clarified the implications of information for the origins debate better than most explanations I've read.  Wilder-Smith was an affable fellow with a lilting accent and big bushy beard who held three PhDs and was an expert in genetics and practiced research related to chemotherapy.  He was a beloved lecturer and teacher and happened to be a young earth creationist.

His knowledge of genetics led him to severely question macro-evolution and his explanations of the relationship between the genetic code and information inspired some of what would later be staples of the Intelligent Design movement. 

Wilder-Smith, however makes a telling point in a simple and clear fashion.  It is simply this:   

The specific and complex ordering of chemicals in the genetic code is distinct from the information carried by the genetic code.  

In focusing on the specifics of the chemical (material) sequences, one easily overlooks the immaterial (idea, plan, concept) that must be accounted for because it is separate from the physical pattern. I'll paraphrase Wilder-Smith's point:

Imagine a spinner with the 26 letters of the alphabet equally spaced in a circle.  By spinning the pointer one has a one in twenty-six chance of the pointer landing on any letter. It is possible that in four consecutive spins one arrives at the letters "f-o-o-t".   The odds of landing on that exact sequence would be 1 in 26x26x26x26 or 1 in 456976, quite unlikely, but not impossible.  So it would be possible, by unguided process, to arrive at a useful or meaningful sequence using 26 "letters".  This is the mathematical problem most tend to focus on.  How likely is it that the vastly more complex sequences of chemicals that make up the genetic code could come together in an unguided random process in a given amount of time?  (4.6 billion years or more).

But what is it about the sequence of letters "f-o-o-t" that makes that sequence functional and why?   The only reason that particular sequence carries meaning is because the English language has imposed a meaning onto that sequence.  One who does not speak English would not find the sequence useful at all.  One who speaks Latin might find the same meaning in a different sequence "p-e-s" (from which we derive the word "pedestrian".)  The same concept can be represented by an entirely different sequence.  In addition, in the context of a sentence the letters "f-o-o-t" can represent the body part we use to walk or it can represent a unit of measure equal to twelve inches.  The same sequence or letters can have multiple meanings. 

What this means is that there is nothing inherent in a sequence of letters that gives any meaning at all.  Only when a language convention is pre-imposed on the sequence does it carry meaning.  And to make matters more complicated, the convention only matters if another entity or mechanism or being is able to decode the sequence according to the pre-arranged convention.

So the implication is that the arrangement of chemicals in the genetic code clearly carries information, but the information is not necessarily inherent in the code itself.  The information that is used to turn chemicals into proteins and proteins into body parts and body parts into living systems is separate from and over and above the particular sequences of chemicals.

ID advocates refer to this as specification and use the term "specified complexity" to suggest that natural processes alone do not account for information.

Critics try to argue that such a concept is unscientific for a number of reasons:  One cannot easily quantify or measure specificity or complexity.  Experiments to to test this notion seem out of reach.  What mechanism can produce the concept of specificity?

But these objections really only skirt the issue by force fitting everything back into an insistence that science requires natural explanations according to fixed laws for everything that has ever existed.  How complex is complex?  The common sense answer is that if something is sufficiently complex that it is unlikely to have occurred by random events in a given time frame, then it is not reasonable to insist that it did.  And from the other direction, if we see examples of immaterial concepts being represented by physical patterns that are attributable to intelligence, then it is not unreasonable to suggest that intelligence is a cause for other similar phenomena.

Ultimately the point is than not only do evolutionists dealing with the question of the origin of life face a daunting question regarding the seeming mathematical impossibility of vast stretches of chemical sequences in the DNA code, equivalent to some 500 volumes of printed text, arriving by unguided processes, naturalists must also account for the immaterial convention or specification that gives the sequences function and the immaterial concepts that ride on the sequences.  Something had to impose a function onto the sequences and some other entity had to be able to translate the code by knowing the same convention.

A second illustration is handy here.  Ideally, evolution would predict that common ancestors not only have similar body plans but will have similar genetic blueprints. For example, no one disputes that there are similarities in body plan between humans and apes.  To bolster belief in common ancestry, evolutionists note the similar body type and couple it to the supposed 98% chimp-human similarity in particular sequences of the genetic code - physical, material similarities.  So we have similar code sequences and similar body plans, therefore common descent is validated.

But opponents of naturalistic evolution keep bringing up contradictory examples.

One very interesting case is noted by Geoff Barnard in Should Christians Embrace Evolution?

Two different examples of small deer, the Indian Muntjac and Chinese Muntjac, appear to be nearly identical in body design and coloring.  One would expect that since the body plans are the same, the genetic makeup would also be the same.  This would validate the claim that similar body plans in humans and chimps plus similar genetic sequences equals a common lineage.  But in fact, the Indian Muntjac female possesses only six chromosomes and the male only seven, while the Chinese muntjac has 23 chromosomes for both the male and female.  Getting back to Wilder-Smith's argument, the arrangement of the biochemical letters are different, yet the body plans are nearly identical - so the information is similar but is carried on very different sequences.  Interestingly, both species can interbreed.

So critics of evolution suggest that this further illustrates that the information carried on the physical DNA structure is not necessarily intrinsic to the particular structure or combination of chemical patterns in the DNA.   It is as if the same information and body plan for one were carried in English in ink and the other carried in Spanish in braille. The body plan is very similar, the medium on which the body plan is carried is very different.

I'm no expert here, but I think this can be said:

Ultimately one has to confront the reality that information is immaterial.  Ideas, plans, instructions do not in any observable process arise out of purely material building blocks.  Living creatures create and share ideas across multiple mediums and the ideas are not dependent on particular languages.  Ideas can be transmitted by paper and ink, image, binary code, sound waves and more.  The question Dr. Wilder-Smith poses is: 

What purely material process could create both the genetic symbols and sequences that carry the information as well as the immaterial information that is embedded onto those symbols?  What purely materialistic events created separate systems that can decode, translate and apprehend the information and make use of it?  

Could it be that the real key to origins is immaterial and beyond the scope of natural law alone? Could it be that materialism completely misses the ultimate basis of reality?

Maybe the statement, "in the beginning was the Word (logos)" has a level of truth to it that we cannot even begin to fathom.