In a recent discussion, the issue about information came up. From a scientific standpoint, what is information? One of the most incredible discoveries in biological sciences was DNA and the fact that DNA contains information. DNA contains all the information that determines our height, build, hair color, eye color, skin color, curly hair, attached ear lobes, our joints, bones, and blood types. DNA contains all that information. But there is a problem. Many people have confused the information that DNA contains with the DNA itself. This is a common misconception but there are whole concepts and ideas that are built up and dependent upon this misconception. This misconception is the same as confusion the words on this blog post with the information contained within the words of the blog post.
Information by definition is non-material. It does not have a physical definition. It is an idea. A concept. Information can be carried in a wide variety of ways and manners. Written language is an excellent means of describing this distinction. The English language consists of 26 letters which compose every word we use. The letters themselves are symbols that represent various sounds or ideas. Exactly how these letters developed is beyond my realm of knowledge. But to make a long story short, in the English language, the 26 letters and the words from which these are composed are unanimously agreed upon by those who speak English to represent the words and ideas we understand. When we see the word "car" in written language, we automatically will have a picture of a vehicle that has four wheels, an engine, and often will seat 4 passengers including the driver. When we see the word "red" we immediately think of the color. But "red" has more than one meaning. To most it is just a descriptive color. But to some, it means a symbol of war. To others, it means a warning. What the word "red" means will vary depending upon who is saying it, who is receiving it, and the context it is being used for.
All forms of codes work the same way. Computer language, binary code, is interesting. We send a signal meaning 5V along a wire and the presence of the voltage is represented by a 1 and a lack of a 5V presence is represented by a 0. The sequence of 1s and 0s is not anything but a series of voltages and lack thereof. There is no information that itself. However, man has put meaning behind that sequence of 0s and 1s to create a massive complex of instructions that are now running our digital age. What is interesting is that the same sequence of 0s and 1s can represent a wide variety of different things. It can represent a color, it can represent a mathematical operation, it can represent a memory location or it can represent the contents of that memory location. How do we tell which is which? The same code is passed through different chips in the CPU and each chip knows exactly what it is dealing with. A memory chip knows by the order of 0s and 1s and the number of them if it needs to access a particular memory location or pull the contents of that memory location, or to store memory into that location. How? The easy answer is "we programmed it to do it". WE know what it means in that particular context so we can direct the chip to perform a particular action when it sees a particular sequence of 0s and 1s. And to make things easier, we represent these said action with a word used in our language which forms the basis of Computer Programming Languages. What is important is that the 0s and 1s are not the information itself but the medium through which the information is transmitted.
Where the confusion between information and the medium of information plays a role is in the Theory of Evolution. DNA and Computer Systems are strikingly similar. Why? They are both read digitally. Computer Systems are read in a sequence of 0s and 1s. DNA is read on a double-helix of four chemical compounds A, T, G, and C. When DNA is passed through the cells, the organelles that read the DNA pick up the context stores in the DNA and perform the instructions they receive. Another organelle will receive the same code but get different instructions. How could this be? Context. The same code read by one person will get one meaning but the same code read by a second person will get a different meaning because the context of the reader will be different. This is how coded messages work. The people who know the "key" to the code will get information out of the text or sequence, bot those who do not know the "key" will only see gibberish.
I have frequently seen people describe Evolution as the "gain of information". And they describe this "gain" with text. One example I have seen several times is if we have the word "red" but through a "mutation" we get "read", that is "new" information. But is it? Let's put that into context.
"I was driving down the road and I saw a red light..."
"I was driving down the road and I saw a read light..."
If this were to be in any novel, it would take the reader out the story and make the reader go back and read it again. Information here was not gained by lost. In this example, most readers would be able to back and make a mental correction and read what is actually intended.
One of the most amazing things about DNA is that is can self-repair. How does it do this? I'll be honest, I don't know the details. I just know it can and does self-repair. If DNA can self-repair, it must have a context, it must have some kind of mechanism that tells it something is wrong. What is more is that it must have some sort of standard to compare to in order to determine if something is wrong. The fact that DNA can self-repair flies in the face of Evolution, because the theory requires the mutations to gather over time. If DNA can self-repair, it would seek to fix any of these mutations. When it can't, it means something is wrong with the standard or the mechanism that does the self-repair.
There is a Law about Information. It states that every piece of information must originate from an intelligent mind. Considering information is the meaning behind the symbols/code/language, regardless of whether that information comes through a medium of written language, computer code, Morse Code, music, audio waves, digital waves, light signals, or whatever medium you choose, if you trace back information it will always come to an intelligent mind. Let's trace the history of the information contains in the movie "Troy" (2004 with Brad Pitt). The movie concept came from mind of the director, who before that got the picture of the movie from the screenwriter. The Screenwriter got the information from an audio copy of the book The Iliad or read the book. That book was translated from a copy of the original Greek to English and that copy can be traced eventually back to the mind of Homer. But there is more. Where did Homer get the information for his story? Obviously not all of it was true, but the information still had to come from somewhere. Part of it was traced back to a likely war between the Greeks and the Trojans. Homer goes into some of the reasons for that war. What inspired Agamemnon to attack Troy? Where did the ideas of the Greek gods come from? The latter question is rather interesting. Some more research needs to be done but some of the Greeks gods in name and origin actually trace back some of the names listed in the Table of Nations in Genesis 10. If we continue this path, we eventually will find ourselves with Adam and Eve and God. Adam and Eve's knowledge and information had to come from somewhere and the only logical conclusion is that their knowledge came from the source of all knowledge: God himself. Otherwise we will end up with an infinite regression that eventually will collapse on itself.
The study of information is incredible. How we can convert the meaning behind one medium of information to another without losing the meaning is proof that information is not the same thing as the medium through which it is carried. One must be careful not to confuse the medium of information with the information itself. When the two are separated into their proper places, it is all solid evidence that God is who he says he is in the Bible. Evolution cannot stand if these two are in their proper place. It must equate the two in order to try to make sense. But the two are not interchangeable and because of this, we have another reason why Evolution cannot hold water. I trust God is who he said he is and he meant what he said. And because information can be known, I have no excuse to not trust him.
No comments:
Post a Comment