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Index to Creationist Claims,  edited by Mark Isaak,    Copyright © 2005
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Claim CF003:

How could information, such as in DNA, assemble itself?

Source:

Brown, Walt, 1995. In the Beginning: Compelling evidence for creation and the Flood. Phoenix, AZ: Center for Scientific Creation, p. 13.

Response:

  1. This question is based on some major misconceptions (addressed below). Its overriding logical error, however, is that it is an argument from ignorance. One's inability to find an answer to a question does not imply that the question has no answer.

  2. Information is not meaning and does not, per se, imply any special structure or function. Any arrangement implies information; the information is how the arrangement is described. If a new arrangement occurs, whether spontaneously or from the outside, new information is assembled in the process. Even if the arrangement consists of shattering a glass into tiny pieces, that means assembling new information.

  3. Nothing needs to assemble itself. Evolution and abiogenesis do not exclude outside influences; on the contrary, such outside influences are essential. In abiogenesis, it is observed that complex organic molecules easily form spontaneously due to little more than basic chemistry and energy from the sun or from the earth's interior. In evolution, information from the environment is communicated to genomes indirectly via natural selection against varieties that do not do well in that environment.

Links:

Musgrave, Ian et al., 2003. Information theory and creationism. http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/information/infotheory.html

Further Reading:

Musgrave, Ian, 1998. Re: Abiogenesis (Post of the Month: April 1998) http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/postmonth/apr98.html
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created 2003-6-24