Information is magic
October 27, 2009 by Chris Hallquist |
No, not really, but increasingly I run into creationists who seem to think it is. The existence of information in, say, DNA, is invoked as proof that God exists, because obviously information is a mysterious immaterial thing that must come from an immaterial source</irony>. As someone who got a decent science education, it’s just obvious to me that information, at least as we find it in DNA, is something that exists in the form of a physical thing, and if you can explain how the physical thing came to be, you explain the information. If it’s possible, given what we know about the natural world, for the molecular structure of DNA to come to be though natural processes, it’s possible for the information in DNA to come to be through natural processes. Of course you might argue, a la the statistical explanation of thermodynamics, that certain possible events in the natural world are nonetheless very improbable, but as far as I can tell information theory provides no resources for such an argument.
proudfootz on Thu, 29th Oct 2009 8:51 pm
The pile of rubble that results from an avalanche is also matter organized in a particular way, which a wise person could interpret as ‘information’ about how the pile got there, when it happened, etc. But I think you are correct that an explanation of the brute physical facts about the natural processes that create the structure shows that the ‘information’ is merely a by-product of a non-teleological system.
It seems that the creationist is very apt to confuse an analogy or poetic metaphor for literal reality.