Too much information

The biggest breakthrough I've had so far came when I pondered a relatively simple question: what is information?

One of the professors interviewed in Lee Strobel's The Case for the Creator made the point that we intuitively understand that information always comes from intelligence. No reasonable person would try to argue otherwise. If you suggested that the Rosetta stone was formed by erosion or that a billboard just naturally formed alongside the highway, people would not only laugh at you but probably question your sanity.

The more I thought about it the more solidly I was convinced that I believe that information always comes from intelligence, with no exceptions.

Around the same time I started reading up on DNA -- I managed to get out of taking biology in both high school and college so I didn't know much about it. The more I read, the more striking it became: this is information. And it makes sense. How else can a being replicate itself but with information?

When I put those two ideas together is the first time I truly believed in some sort of God. To get my son from a couple of cells at the moment of conception to the toddler who just grabbed my mouse and threw it in the trash must require information (and a lot of it).

My father always explained to me that people created belief in God because they couldn't figure out any better explanations for why things happened. They didn't know why the stars existed or how mountains formed, so they attributed it to some sort of supernatural being for lack of anything better to think. When I started exploring religion I assumed that if I came to believe in God it would be along similar lines of thought, a sort of, "well, I can't think of anything better so I guess I'll just go with the 'ol God theory."

But this changes things. I don't believe that life was created by intelligence because I'm grasping at straws. I believe that intelligence is behind DNA for the same reason I believe that intelligence (using the term loosely) is behind that Bud Lite billboard I pass on my way to the store every day: it's information.

As I've said in other posts, I think I'm most of the way there intellectually. Surprisingly, that part of it just fell into place almost immediately once I started exploring the subject. But I have yet to make much progress emotionally, and that promises to be the hardest part.