The Origin of the Information in DNA

The way to address the question of the origin of the information stored in DNA is similar to what historical scientists, detectives, or geologists do to study events from the past. Given the observed present clues, the idea is to infer what past conditions or causes best explain the relevant evidence. The main issue, of course, is when multiple causes can explain the same effect. To address this, 19th-century geologist Thomas Chamberlain developed a method of reasoning called “the method of multiple working hypotheses”, later called the “inference to the best explanation”.

The key criterion for determining which hypothesis best explains the observed evidence is based on its ability to generate the effect in question, in other words, its casual adequacy. This requires identifying causes known to have the power to produce the kind of effect, feature, or event in question. One of the first scientists to develop this principle was the geologist Charles Lyell, who greatly influenced Charles Darwin. Lyell argued that when scientists seek to explain events in the past, they should not invoke unknown types of causes, but those known from our uniform experience of cause and effect to have the power to produce the event in question.

With this in mind, let's see what known cause better explains the information found in DNA. To answer this, we first need to understand what type of information is stored in DNA.

There are different levels of information. The lowest level, namely, the statistical level, first developed by Clause E. Shannon in his Shannon’s Theory of Information (link to paper), associates the amount of information with how improbable a sequence of symbols is, regardless of whether or not the sequence itself has any meaning: the greater the improbability the greater the amount of information it stored. In that sense, a random sequence of letters, for instance, will have, according to Shannon’s theory, the same amount of information as those same letters organized into a coherent sentence, communicating a message. Clearly, the latter poses a higher level of information. Similarly, the type of information in DNA is much more than just random improbable sequences of nucleotides. In fact, several biologists have come to recognize that the specific arrangements of bases of DNA, similar to the arrangements of letters in an English sentence, or characters in a digital code, not only exhibit a high degree of improbability (high Shannon information) but also functional information, sometimes called specified complexity.

As it turns out, DNA stores the highest level of information. It not only possesses specificity (highly improbability, the statistical level), but it also exhibits all the other higher levels of information (see Dr. Werner Gitt's book Information. The key to life), namely: syntax, related to the grammar of the message, semantics, related to the meaning stored in the message, pragmatics, information that request an action, and apobetics, if the action required fulfilled a purpose. First of all, the specific arrangements of the nucleotide bases in DNA carry a meaningful message (the syntax and semantic levels of information). This enables the DNA bases to perform a function in the cell, i.e., the bases in DNA convey instructions for building proteins (the pragmatic level). Even more so, it uses this functional information with a purpose or goal in mind, i.e., with foresight (the apobetics level). Let’s remember that proteins do most of the work in cells and are necessary for the structure, function, and regulation of the body's tissues and organs. 

Even more impressive, the digital information in DNA represents only part of a complex information-transmission and -processing system—an advanced form of nanotechnology that significantly exceeds any technology or machinery known to mankind in terms of its complexity, design logic, and information-storage density.

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This is quite impressive with remarkable implications.

If we trace the origin of similar types of information (language-like, digital code-like) in any given system, we always deduce that there must be an intelligence behind it. Why? because we know, through our uniform experience of cause and effect, that natural processes do not produce this type of information, only a mind produces such an effect. Therefore, the best explanation for the origin of the information observed in DNA is an intelligent agent. 

The information stored in DNA, which is the key element for the origin of life, is clear and irrefutable evidence of a mind behind our universe. 

Post based on Stephen C. Meyer's Return to the God Hypothesis book, chapter 7, and Dr. Werner Gitt's Information: the key to life book, see resources.