The creation information barrier

Most of this blog is based on an article by Duane Caldwell.

The border wall between the United States and Mexico is intended to deter illegal immigration and drug trafficking. Trump’s administration promoted border wall construction, while Biden’s administration has largely worked to stop or limit further expansion.

Information barriers are safeguards that restrict access to specific information or prevent communication between certain individuals or groups. They act like walls within a larger information ecosystem, making sure sensitive data stays within authorized boundaries. In the study of the origin of life, the information barrier refers to the challenge of how complex biological information, such as genetic code, could have arisen from simpler chemical compounds.

Chemicals are separated from living tissue by the Creation Information Barrier (CIB). This serves as an unbreachable barrier between matter and the abstract, information-bearing codes that can be placed upon it. The introduction of abstract, non-material information into material matter can only be accomplished by the intervention of an intelligent designer.

The CIB is comprised of two parts: the origin of information, and the usage of information via codes, purpose and function.

The origin of information: Nonmaterial

Where does information come from? There are four building blocks to the origin of information.

1. Information is a fundamental part of reality. The building blocks of the universe are space, time, matter/energy, and information.
2. Nonmaterial things do not come from material things.
3. Information is a nonmaterial thing.
4. Life requires information. Life is impossible without specific, life-permitting information.

This part of the barrier demonstrates that materialistic theories for the origin of life are doomed to failure – they will never alone produce a living cell.

Codes, purpose and function

To use information requires artifacts that originate only in the mind, such as symbols and codes. The use of such codes require a sender with purpose and a receiver with appropriate reception abilities.

Information that is not shared, that remains a concept in a single mind, cannot impart life. To be useful for life, it must be shared and imparted on matter in such a way that the information uses matter, either by conforming it or superimposing on it the rules of information sharing via codes. In so doing it causes the matter to convey the message and achieve the purpose intended by the creator of the message.

To have a meaningful transfer of functional information or code there must be a sender and receiver at each end of the transmission. There must also be an understanding of meaning at each end for the code to be useful. Therefore, there must be some form of intelligence or at least a mechanical machine or chemical molecule to receive the code, interpret it, and perform the desired function.

This is yet another barrier to materialistic theories on the origin of life. Everything involved in the sharing of information, the creation and use of codes, the creation of a message, the creation of a receiver capable of receiving the message – all originate ultimately in the mind of an intelligent, purposeful creator.

Both of these parts of CIB form an insurmountable barrier to the origin of life by material means alone.

The first barrier

Where did the information necessary for life come from? Material objects, must be imbued with information to become living things. Since information, a nonmaterial entity needed for life, cannot have arisen from a material object, where did it come from? How did it get bound and imparted to material objects like chemicals in such a way as to result in life?

The second barrier

How did information get encoded into the DNA molecule? Where did the code come from? How did it come to be that DNA and RNA function as a repository of information with a means to transmit that information?

Discussion

The atheist cannot answer these questions. All of these are required for life yet there is no chance that any of it happened accidentally. It’s not a matter of chance. It is impossible by chance alone. Neither is it a matter of time. No amount of time will allow sufficient time for the material to produce the nonmaterial or conceive and transmit coded messages. The laws of information and physics prevent it. It will never happen because it is simply impossible by time alone. Thus the elements of time and chance have been removed.

And energy cannot produce the nonmaterial or conceive and transmit coded messages. Instead, electromagnetic radiation eventually heats matter and many larger molecules are degraded. So, energy from the sun combined with time and chance will never create the information found in living tissue. And life could not have originated from non-living matter without the creation of this information.

That is the power of the CIB. That is why it will always win the origins argument. The atheist, who is forced to be a materialist (one who believes only in a material world) due to their rejection of God, will never be able to give an adequate answer to the origin of the information needed for life. They will never be able to explain how that information got imparted to the material to produce life or how the codes needed to share that information came into existence. They cannot explain in a secular manner what God did when He created Adam (Gen. 2:7).

The CIB between matter and living tissue is the best evidence for the necessity of a supernatural intelligence in the creation of life. It only requires an adherence to the laws of physics and science. And it is demonstrably 100% certain and true. The conclusions from the CIB are always true.

Evolutionary biology suggests that DNA and biological information evolved over time through processes such as mutation, natural selection, and genetic drift. These mechanisms, it is argued, increase biological complexity without needing an intelligent source. But this is incorrect – information is nonmaterial. It cannot be created by mutation, natural selection, or genetic drift alone.

Conclusion

Life is possible because of biological information. The biological molecules, machines, and networks do not make the information. Rather, the information makes the molecules, machines and networks. There is an unbreachable gap between matter and biological information.

The Creation Information Barrier prohibits the creation of life from matter without the creation of information by an intelligent being. It is an unbreachable gap between chemicals and living things. Only a mind can cross the Creation Information Barrier.

The Creation Information Barrier is the supreme argument for the necessity of a supernatural intelligence in the creation of life when discussing the origin of life.

References

Caldwell D (2024), “CIB: Like Superman with no Kryptonite Weakness”, Rationalfaith.com

Funk K W (2024), “The creation information barrier – An unbreachable gap between chemicals and living things”, Creation.com

Acknowledgement

Most of this blog is based on an article by Duane Caldwell.

Posted, September 2024

Also see: Life is like a computer