Ordered properties such as crystalline structure vs specified complexity and information:
What needs explaining is not the origin of order (whether in the form of crystals, swirling tornadoes, or the “eyes” of hurricanes), but the origin of information–the highly improbable, aperiodic, and yet specified sequences that make biological function possible.
To see the distinction between order and information, compare the sequence “ABABABABAB ABAB” to the sequence “Time and tide wait for no man.” The first sequence is repetitive and ordered, but not complex or informative. Systems that are characterized by both specificity and complexity (what information theorists call “specified complexity”) have “information content.” Since such systems have the qualitative feature of aperiodicity or complexity, they are qualitatively distinguishable from systems characterized by simple periodic order. Thus, attempts to explain the origin of order have no relevance to discussions of the origin of information content. Significantly, the nucleotide sequences in the coding regions of DNA have, by all accounts, a high information content–that is, they are both highly specified and complex, just like meaningful English sentences or functional lines of code in computer software.
Yet the information contained in an English sentence or computer software does not derive from the chemistry of the ink or the physics of magnetism, but from a source extrinsic to physics and chemistry altogether. Indeed, in both cases, the message transcends the properties of the medium. The information in DNA also transcends the properties of its material medium. Because chemical bonds do not determine the arrangement of nucleotide bases, the nucleotides can assume a vast array of possible sequences and thereby express many different biochemical messages.
If the properties of matter (i.e., the medium) do not suffice to explain the origin of information, what does? Our experience with information-intensive systems (especially codes and languages) indicates that such systems always come from an intelligent source — i.e., from mental or personal agents, not chance or material necessity. This generalization about the cause of information has, ironically, received confirmation from origin-of-life research itself. During the last forty years, every naturalistic model proposed has failed to explain the origin of information — the great stumbling block for materialistic scenarios. Thus, mind or intelligence or what philosophers call “agent causation” now stands as the only cause known to be capable of creating an information-rich system, including the coding regions of DNA, functional proteins, and the cell as a whole.
Because mind or intelligent design is a necessary cause of an informative system, one can detect the past action of an intelligent cause from the presence of an information-intensive effect, even if the cause itself cannot be directly observed. Since information requires an intelligent source, the flowers spelling “Welcome to Victoria” in the gardens of Victoria harbor in Canada lead visitors to infer the activity of intelligent agents even if they did not see the flowers planted and arranged.
Scientists in many fields now recognize the connection between intelligence and information and make inferences accordingly. Archaeologists assume a mind produced the inscriptions on the Rosetta Stone. SETI’s search for extraterrestrial intelligence presupposes that the presence of information imbedded in electromagnetic signals from space would indicate an intelligent source. As yet, radio astronomers have not found information-bearing signals coming from space. But molecular biologists, looking closer to home, have discovered information in the cell. Consequently, DNA justifies making what probability theorist William A. Dembski calls “the design inference.”
