Genetics
The science of heredity reveals DNA as an information storage system of extraordinary sophistication—a digital code that stores, transmits, and expresses biological information with remarkable fidelity.
Information and Its Origin
The origin of genetic information poses a fundamental challenge to naturalistic explanations. Information is not a physical quantity; it is a relationship between symbols and their referents. Chemistry produces complexity; it does not produce meaning.
The Divine Algorithm demands radical honesty about what we know and don't know. In every known case, specified information—sequences that perform functions—originates from intelligent minds. DNA contains specified information. The inference to intelligence is not a gap argument but an inference to the best explanation.
- Specified Complexity: DNA contains not random sequences but functional instructions. The probability of generating a functional protein by chance is astronomically low—far beyond the probabilistic resources of the universe.
- Semiotic Structure: The genetic code involves syntax (codon structure), semantics (amino acid meaning), and pragmatics (protein function). This is language, not chemistry. Languages require authors.
- The Sequence Hypothesis: Francis Crick recognized that DNA's information content is independent of its chemistry—the sequence is arbitrary, like letters in a word. This arbitrariness is the hallmark of symbolic systems.
- Information Origin: We have extensive experience with information: books, software, blueprints. In every case, specified information traces to intelligence. DNA is the most sophisticated information system known.
Epigenetics: Information Beyond DNA
Beyond the genetic code, sophisticated regulatory systems control when and how genes are expressed. The genome is not a simple blueprint but a dynamic, context-sensitive information system.
Epigenetics reveals layers of information beyond DNA sequence—chemical modifications, chromatin structure, and regulatory networks. The same genome produces 200+ cell types in the human body. The information for this differentiation exceeds what DNA alone can specify.
- Gene Regulation: Complex networks of switches, enhancers, and repressors control gene expression. A single gene may have dozens of regulatory elements responding to different signals.
- Epigenetic Marks: Chemical modifications to DNA and histones add another layer of heritable information. Methylation patterns can be transmitted across generations—Lamarckian inheritance at the molecular level.
- Non-Coding RNA: Much of the genome produces regulatory RNAs that control gene expression. What was once called 'junk DNA' turns out to be a sophisticated control system.
- Three-Dimensional Organization: Chromosomes fold into specific 3D structures that bring distant regulatory elements together. The genome is a four-dimensional information system—sequence plus spatial organization plus time.