Atheism and Agnosticism — The Problem of Information

Let’s jump to the 14th floor. Life has spontaneously arrived, and has begun to mutate and grow (we’ll skip over the abiogenesis problem in other words). But genetic mutations are almost exclusively bad. In computer programs, we’d call those bugs; in life they’re birth defects. Since the vast majority of mutations are bad, for evolution you’ll need vast quantities of sequential good mutations for an eye to evolve, for example. That quickly becomes mathematically impossible to occur by random chance, which is why even Dawkins doesn’t hold that position.

So the evolutionist claims mutations aren’t random, and in the example of abiogenesis, amino acids combine in chemically consistent patterns. But that won’t work either. Suppose that’s how it works — would you get anything?

Let’s go back to the keyboard, and consider computer programs. Random typing obviously won’t produce a word processor. But suppose the keys follow certain combinations consistently. “A” follows d, e follows x, d follows e or z, and so on. What would you get? Just patterns, but no information — no word processor.

Since DNA/RNA boils down to a computer program, how did information evolve? You’ve got two possibilities:

  1. It’s random. This will create a computer code, given sufficient time. But in the age of the universe not enough time exists to produce anything useful (the monkeys at typewriters problem).
  2. It’s not random, and some external influence caused it (the Dawkins idea) — but whoa, we don’t want to call that “god”.

Beyond the problem of information, science can never answer what happened at t=0 in the universe, because it runs into the Planck time problem; the beginning of life and the universe becomes a philosophical question, not a scientific one because it’s impossible to perform experiments recreating those conditions. Where are the experiments for abiogenesis? The big bang? It’s assumed because evolution requires it, not because we have numerous scientific experiments creating life from non-life.

How did life and the universe begin? How did information arise? Remember, the scientific method requires repeatable, verifiable experiments. If you don’t have numerous experiments, you’ve got philosophy, not science (if you do have scientific experimental data for abiogenesis, leave a comment with the experiment, those involved, and the date so we can look it up).

You’re free to do as you wish, but you can’t call it science if it refuses to follow the scientific method with experimental data. No data, no science, by definition.

Filed Under: Atheism

Recommended Citation:
Yeager, Darrin "Atheism and Agnosticism — The Problem of Information" (2023-11-23 14:45),
https://www.dyeager.org/post/atheism-agnosticism-series-part5-information.html
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