The Law of Information

It was once thought that babies were deposited into women by men during sex. This tiny, complete baby was called a homunculus.
 
From a Bible perspective, this explained how "in Adam, all had sinned." The whole of humanity resided within his loins (homunculi within homunculi within homunculi ...). Therefore, when Adam sinned, all of his contained homunculi were tainted by an "original sin" requiring a savior.

Homunculus drawing by Hartsocker in the 1600s

DNA INFORMATION
Modern embryology and genetics retired the homunculus. The information to form a baby is now understood to result from the combined DNA from mother and father in a fertilized egg.
 
This egg, the size of the period at the end of this sentence, contains about three billion DNA letters arranged into sentences, paragraphs, and books. The information in DNA is thought to account for every structure and function of a human.
 
The DNA molecule is made of four nucleotides, represented by the letters A,C,G,T (adenine, cytosine, guanine, thymine). This is a quaternary code, as opposed to the binary code of computers. These molecular letters are organized into genetic words, sentences, paragraphs, chapters, and books.

The prodigious DNA information in even one human cell is staggering. The estimated 100 trillion cells in the body would equal about 1,000,000,000,000,000 (10¹⁵) copies of a 400pp book. That's enough books, stacked side-by-side, as in a library, to reach the sun well over fifty times.
 
The information-carrying capacity of DNA is thought to outstrip man-made data-storage devices such as flash memory, hard disks, and quantum computing. It's estimated that about a teaspoon of DNA could hold all human-generated information from the Greeks up to modern texts, movies, and selfies.          
 
It's speculated that with present silicon chip technology, by 2040 the amount of world data accumulated for instant access would require a facility costing billions and decades to build. This is not to mention consuming hundreds of megawatts of power and exhausting the world's supply of computer-grade silicon. On the other hand, only about two pounds of DNA would be required for this storage and would consume about 0.04 watts per gigabyte.
 
The looming question is, where did DNA information come from in the first place, and what orchestrates the timing of its millions of switches and functions second by second?
 
 
ATOMS ARE AN INSUFFICIENT CAUSE
The materialistic abiogenesis (life from nonlife) view is that atoms have the ability to self-organize into information. However, evidence is lacking that a cell, or organelle within a cell, has ever spontaneously or experimentally been formed.
 
That's because atoms contain no information other than that dictating their own existence and limited capabilities. Atoms in ink are not the cause of the information in a blueprint. Atoms have not been shown to produce functionally integrated, goal-directed systems like organelles and living cells
 
Intelligently directed experiments have produced amino acids, RNA, and membranes similar to those found in cells. But the laboratory conditions are speculative. In addition, the end products do not match what would occur spontaneously in the natural world.

​Atoms and molecules can naturally manifest in different forms. A snowflake does not look at all like a water molecule. Even though there are countless snowflake configurations, they are all an expression of a preexisting capacity held within water molecules. Other inherent water abilities include evaporation, sublimation, and expansion upon freezing. 

​Complex functional things—like life—must come from a sufficient cause. The injection of intelligent information is always necessary to take fundamental things beyond their intrinsic nature. On their own, water molecules don't become ice sculptures, letters don't become books, dust doesn't create skyscrapers, and atoms don't create DNA.
 
Moreover, it's an immutable law that things naturally lose information, they don't gain it. Start at one end of a group of people and whisper to the person: "Earth science describes nature's machinations." Then ask that it be whispered one to another to the end of the group. When it gets to the end it will be something like: "Washing machines clean Earth."
 
At the end of any series of random events acting upon information, the loss of information always exceeds any random gains.
 
On July 22, 1962, the Mariner 1 space probe was exploded shortly after liftoff. The omission of a single hyphen in the guidance software information led to a series of false course correction signals. The rocket was then deliberately detonated to prevent it from crashing down in a populated area. The rocket was worth between $80 and $150 million, a loss due to a single typo error. The point is that even a small inadvertent error can fatally destroy functional information. Imagine what random changes can do.
 
Neither the formation of or inevitable degradation of information over time jibes with materialism. Science is about observation and facts. But there are no observations or facts demonstrating the spontaneous formation of information or its increase in the absence of outside intelligent agency.
 
Matter can naturally manifest in different forms that, at first glance, appear to be something other and more complex than what they were to begin with. A snowflake is an intricate pattern that does not look at all like a water molecule. But the snowflake is nothing more than a manifestation of the preexisting information in the molecule. Even though there are trillions of different snowflake configurations, they are all an expression of a preexistent capacity held within water molecules. But aside from the ability to form water, clouds, and snowflakes, as well as evaporate, sublimate, combine with or disassociate other chemicals, and expand upon freezing, that's about all the information that water molecules contain. The encyclopedia within water molecules never so much as adds even a meaningful word. It is what it is and that's it.

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