| Information Theory and the End of Materialism Materialist philosophy
lies at the basis of the theory of evolution. Materialism rests on the supposition
that everything that exists is matter. According to this philosophy, matter has
existed since eternity, will continue to exist forever, and there is nothing but
matter. In order to provide support for their claim, materialists use a logic
called "reductionism." This is the idea that things which are not observable can
also be explained by material causes. To make matters clearer,
let us take the example of the human mind. It is evident that the mind cannot
be touched or seen. Moreover, it has no center in the human brain. This situation
unavoidably leads us to the conclusion that mind is a concept beyond matter. Therefore,
the being which we refer to as "I," who thinks, loves, fears, worries, and feels
pleasure or pain, is not a material being in the same way as a sofa, a table or
a stone. Materialists, however, claim that
mind is "reducible to matter." According to the materialist claim, thinking, loving,
worrying and all our mental activities are nothing but chemical reactions taking
place between the atoms in the brain. Loving someone is a chemical reaction in
some cells in our brain, and fear is another. The famous materialist philosopher
Karl Vogt is notorious for his assertion that "the brain
secretes thought just as the liver secretes bile."384
Bile, however, is matter, whereas there is no evidence that thought is. Reductionism
is a logical deduction. However, a logical deduction can be based on solid grounds
or on shaky ones. For this reason, the question we need to ask is: What
happens when reductionism is compared to scientific data? Nineteenth-century
materialist scientists and thinkers thought that the answer would be that science
verifies reductionism. Twentieth-century science, however, has revealed a very
different picture. One of the most salient feature of
this picture is "information," which is present in nature and can never be reduced
to matter.
The Difference between Matter and Information
We earlier mentioned that there is incredibly
comprehensive information contained in the DNA of living things. Something as
small as a hundred thousandth of a millimeter across contains a sort of "data
bank" that specifies all the physical details of the body of a living thing. Moreover,
the body also contains a system that reads this information, interprets it and
carries out "production" in line with it. In all living cells, the information
in the DNA is "read" by various enzymes, and proteins are produced. This system
makes possible the production of millions of proteins every second, of just the
required type for just the places where they are needed in our bodies. In this
way, dead eye cells are replaced by living ones, and old blood cells by new ones.
At this point, let us consider the claim of materialism: Is
it possible that the information in DNA could be reduced to matter, as materialists
suggest? Or, in other words, can it be accepted that DNA is merely a collection
of matter, and the information it contains came about as a result of the random
interactions of such pieces of matter?
It is impossible for the information inside
DNA to have emerged by chance and natural processes. | All
the scientific research, experiments and observations carried out in the twentieth
century show that the answer to this question is a definite "No." The director
of the German Federal Physics and Technology Institute, Prof. Werner Gitt, has
this to say on the issue: A
coding system always entails a nonmaterial intellectual process. A physical matter
cannot produce an information code. All experiences show that every piece of creative
information represents some mental effort and can be traced to a personal idea-giver
who exercised his own free will, and who is endowed with an intelligent mind....
There is no known law of nature, no known process and no known sequence
of events which can cause information to originate by itself in matter...385 Werner
Gitt's words summarize the conclusions of "information theory,"
which has been developed in the last 50 years, and which is accepted as a part
of thermodynamics. Information theory investigates the origin and nature of the
information in the universe. The conclusion reached by information theoreticians
as a result of long studies is that "Information is something different
from matter. It can never be reduced to matter. The origin of information and
physical matter must be investigated separately." For
instance, let us think of the source of a book. A book consists of paper, ink,
and the information it contains. Paper and ink are material elements. Their source
is again matter: Paper is made of cellulose, and ink of various chemicals. However,
the information in the book is nonmaterial, and cannot have a material source.
The source of the information in each book is the mind of the person who wrote
it. Moreover, this mind determines how the paper and ink will
be used. A book initially forms in the mind of the writer. The writer builds a
chain of logic in his mind, and orders his sentences. As a second step, he puts
them into material form, which is to say that he translates the information in
his mind into letters, using a pen, a typewriter or a computer. Later, these letters
are printed in a publishing house, and take the shape of a book made up of paper
and ink. We can therefore state this general conclusion: If
physical matter contains information, then that matter must have been designed
by a mind that possessed the information in question. First there is the mind.
That mind translates the information it possesses into matter, which constitutes
the act of design.
The Origin of the Information in Nature
When we apply this scientific definition of information
to nature, a very important result ensues. This is because nature overflows with
an immense body of information (as, for example, in the case of DNA), and since
this information cannot be reduced to matter, it therefore comes from a source
beyond matter. One of the foremost advocates of the theory
of evolution, George C. Williams, admits this reality, which most materialists
and evolutionists are reluctant to see. Williams has strongly defended materialism
for years, but in an article he wrote in 1995, he states the incorrectness of
the materialist (reductionist) approach which holds that everything is matter:
Evolutionary biologists have failed to realize
that they work with two more or less incommensurable domains: that of information
and that of matter… These two domains will never be brought together in any kind
of the sense usually implied by the term "reductionism." …The gene is a package
of information, not an object... In biology, when you're talking about things
like genes and genotypes and gene pools, you're talking about information, not
physical objective reality... This dearth of shared descriptors makes
matter and information two separate domains of existence, which have to be discussed
separately, in their own terms. Therefore,
contrary to the supposition of materialists, the source of the information in
nature cannot be matter itself. The source of information is not matter but a
superior Wisdom beyond matter. This Wisdom existed prior to matter. The possessor
of this Wisdom is God, the Lord of all the Worlds. Matter was brought into existence,
given form, and organized by Him.
Materialist Admissions
We have already described how one of the fundamental
principles that make up life is "knowledge," and it is clear that this knowledge
proves the existence of an intelligent Creator. The theory of evolution, which
tries to account for life as being the result of coincidences in a purely material
world, and the materialist philosophy it is based on, are quite helpless in the
face of this reality. When we look at evolutionists' writings,
we sometimes see that this helplessness is openly admitted. One forthright authority
on this subject is the well-known French zoologist Pierre-Paul Grassé. He is a
materialist and an evolutionist, although he sometimes openly admits the quandaries
Darwinist theory faces. According to Grassé, the most important truth which invalidates
the Darwinist account is the knowledge that gives rise to life:
Any living being possesses an enormous amount
of "intelligence," very much more than is necessary to build the most magnificent
of cathedrals. Today, this "intelligence" is called information, but it is still
the same thing. It is not programmed as in a computer, but rather it is condensed
on a molecular scale in the chromosomal DNA or in that of every other organelle
in each cell. This "intelligence" is the sine qua non of life. Where does it come
from?... This is a problem that concerns both biologists and philosophers, and,
at present, science seems incapable of solving it.387 The
reason why Pierre-Paul Grassé says, "Science seems incapable of solving it," is
that he does not want any nonmaterialist explanation to be thought of as "scientific."
However, science itself invalidates the hypotheses of materialist philosophy,
and proves the existence of a Creator. Grassé and other materialist "scientists"
either ignore this reality, or else say, "Science does not explain this." They
do this because they are materialists first and scientists second,
and they continue to believe in materialism, even if science demonstrates the
exact opposite. For this reason, in order to possess a correct
scientific attitude, one has to distinguish between science and materialist philosophy.
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