The importance of information in the evolution debate

Creationists often mention the concept of information as a challenge to the grand theory of evolution.

Information as a concept has long been recognised. It is something all people agree exists even if there is debate about how it is categorised. Archaeologists discovering inscriptions know there is a meaning even if they do not know what the meaning is, and most people would not dispute this. People recognise several things that are designed. Though one could say they do so because they already know these things are designed, such as a car or computer; there are examples of things we are not previously aware of, but we would still recognise intention.

As I have mentioned previously, information is not composed of, nor derived from matter. Of course it can be stored in matter.

There are several concepts of what information is, at least in terms of how we should represent information theory mathematically.

The application to evolution centres on the connection to DNA. DNA is recognised as carrying information. It has meaning. It resembles a blueprint, and metaphorically is one.

We can study how information originates. If the source of all information can be shown to be greater information (that is intelligence), then this conclusion also applies to DNA.

There are 2 potential ways that one could show information cannot be produced by itself. It may be possible to show this mathematically, in which case we can be absolutely certain (or essentially certain if the proof is statistical).

If not mathematically, it may be possible to show this empirically: that is, in investigating all the billions of examples of information that have been directly observed; if all are shown to have come from higher information sources and zero are self producing, then we can be extremely confident of our thesis.

Therefore the impossibility of information coming from non-information, mathematically or empirically, disproves Darwinism. Rather than being a red-herring as is sometimes claimed, information theory is absolutely central.