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:
- 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.
- 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.
- 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
created 2003-6-24
