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Yes, I know, that sounds crazy. But I’m not asking you to believe anything just yet, until you see the evidence for yourself. All I ask is that you refrain from disbelieving while I show you my proof. It only takes a minute to convey, but it speaks to one of the most important questions of all time.
So how is this message proof of the existence of God? This web page you’re reading contains letters, words and sentences. It contains a message that means something. As long as you can read English, you can understand what I’m saying.
You can do all kinds of things with this message. You can read it on your computer screen. You can print it out on your printer. You can read it out loud to a friend who’s in the same room as you are. You can call your friend and read it to her over the telephone. You can save it as a Microsoft WORD document. You can forward it to someone via email, or you can post it on some other website.
Regardless of how you copy it or where you send it, the information remains the same. My email contains a message. It contains information in the form of language. The message is independent of the medium it is sent in. Messages are not matter, even though they can be carried by matter (like printing this email on a piece of paper). Messages are not energy even though they can be carried by energy (like the sound of my voice.)
Messages are immaterial. Information is itself a unique kind of entity. It can be stored and transmitted and copied in many forms, but the meaning still stays the same. Messages can be in English, French or Chinese. Or Morse Code. Or mating calls of birds. Or the Internet. Or radio or television. Or computer programs or architect blueprints or stone carvings. Every cell in your body contains a message encoded in DNA, representing a complete plan for you.
OK, so what does this have to do with God? It’s very simple. Messages, languages, and coded information ONLY come from a mind. A mind that agrees on an alphabet and a meaning of words and sentences. A mind that expresses both desire and intent. Whether I use the simplest possible explanation, such as the one I’m giving you here, or if we analyze language with advanced mathematics and engineering communication theory, we can say this with total confidence: “Messages, languages and coded information never, ever come from anything else besides a mind.
No one has ever produced a single example of a message that did not come from a mind.” Nature can create fascinating patterns – snowflakes, sand dunes, crystals, stalagmites and stalactites. Tornadoes and turbulence and cloud formations. But non-living things cannot create language. They *cannot* create codes. Rocks cannot think and they cannot talk. And they cannot create information. It is believed by some that life on planet earth arose accidentally from the “primordial soup,” the early ocean which produced enzymes and eventually RNA, DNA, and primitive cells. But there is still a problem with this theory: It fails to answer the question, ‘Where did the information come from?’
DNA is not merely a molecule. Nor is it simply a “pattern.” Yes, it contains chemicals and proteins, but those chemicals are arranged to form an intricate language, in the exact same way that English and Chinese and HTML are languages.
DNA has a four-letter alphabet, and structures very similar to words, sentences and paragraphs. With very precise instructions and systems that check for errors and correct them. It is formally and scientifically a code. All codes we know the origin of are designed. To the person who says that life arose naturally, you need only ask: “Where did the information come from? Show me just ONE example of a language that didn’t come from a mind.”
As simple as this question is, I’ve personally presented it in public presentations and Internet discussion forums for more than four years. I’ve addressed more than 100,000 people, including hostile, skeptical audiences who insist that life arose without the assistance of God. But to a person, none of them have ever been able to explain where the information came from.
This riddle is “So simple any child can understand; so complex, no atheist can solve.” You can hear or read my full presentation on this topic at If You Can Read This…. Matter and energy have to come from somewhere. Everyone can agree on that. But information has to come from somewhere, too! Information is separate entity, fully on par with matter and energy. And information can only come from a mind. If books and poems and TV shows come from human intelligence, then all living things inevitably came from a superintelligence.
Every word you hear, every sentence you speak, every dog that barks, every song you sing, every email you read, every packet of information that zings across the Internet, is proof of the existence of God. Because information and language always originate in a mind.
In the beginning were words and language. In the Beginning was Information. When we consider the mystery of life – where it came from and how this miracle is possible – do we not at the same time ask the question where it is going, and what its purpose is?
Respectfully Submitted,
– Perry Marshall -
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Apologies, but the ignorance inherent in the original post is staggering. Clearly the only “research” you have done is from pro-creationist websites, and not from a purely impartial, scientific-based source.
DNA is not a language of four letters, naturally. We IMPOSE those four letters on it. It has four possible combinations, but they are not in and of themselves letters.
Again, we have IMPOSED those letters on DNA to aid in our own understanding. We could just as easily have assigned colours to them, or sounds. Letters was simply a nice, easy way of doing it. Seriously, get out of the pro-creationist sites and learn a little. There is no language inherently involved. It’s like looking at the shades of a leaf as it goes from spring through summer and autumn, and through winter, and assigning letters to the different shades. There is no language inherent in the leaf, we are imposing this upon it to aid in our own understanding of it. Chemical reactions are not chance, or random, they are inevitable.
Learn more about the scientific hypotheses regarding the emergence of life before you mock it, your post makes it clear you also lack any real understanding in that area as well.
tzar
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“All codes we know the origin of are designed” That statement is not true. DNA is, in and of itself, the proof that this is not so. There are also many other examples in nature of “codes”, as such, which are not designed. The example I used about the colours of leaves could be cited as another, though certainly not as precise or encompassing as DNA but that is to be expected. The chemical and synaptic processes in a brain may well be the same. Your argument from ignorance is nothing more than the logical fallacy which anyone with an understanding of such things will immediately recognize it as.
tzar
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Whatever the case of how one identifies them Tzar, – be it letters or otherwise, ACGT represent a form of information and would be utterly meaningless/useless unless they are arranged in the correct sequences – just like the letters of our english alphabet. The point is that the arrangement of the nucleotide bond pairs is what allows for the correct functionality of cells. Are you seriously asking us to believe those specific, complex, meaningful arrangements simply came about by random chance over eons of time? Moreover, I’m wondering how it is that you can justify/account for your use of knowledge at all, let alone your apparent trust and faith in the scientific method? It seems to me that such things are completely unjustified and without foundation on your atheistic worldview…
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God exists. Just look around on His creations in your surroundings, you see the plants, animals here on ground and on above the sky. You can see the stars and moon during night time while sun and clouds during day time right? Can anyone do that except GOD? Even the universe. Look at the planets. They are being made and positioned on a matter that they wont be revolving on their orbits and rotating on their own axis without bouncing each other.
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Rica wrote:
God exists.Claim without evidence. Therefore dismissed without need to provide evidence against it.
Rica wrote:
Just look around on His creations in your surroundings, you see the plants, animals here on ground and on above the sky. You can see the stars and moon during night time while sun and clouds during day time right? Can anyone do that except GOD?Your language is loaded, and in so being it is deceptive and dishonest.
I look around at what exists, I see plants, animals on the ground and in the sky. I see the stars and the moon during night time and I see the moon, the sun and clouds during day time.
Can anyone do that?
Possibly, I would have to claim absolute knowledge to say no. We certainly have no evidence to suggest anyone either can, or has. We have completely natural explanations for their formation and existence without the need to add extra layers of complexity by also supposing that there is a greater being who for some reason chose to create everything in exactly such a way that their “creation” could be more easily have been formed via completely natural means consistent with the universe we observe now and with all our understanding of how it has been, and will be.Rica wrote:
Even the universe. Look at the planets. They are being made and positioned on a matter that they wont be revolving on their orbits and rotating on their own axis without bouncing each other.Hmmm. Wow. Sorry but I am unsure from your post as to your age. I mention this only because in part your language suggests a certain level of intellectual maturity which leads me to assumptions as to your age (my assumptions, I fully accept they are highly likely to be off the mark I only hope it is to lesser, not greater, degree).
However a comment like this one suggests a complete lack of ANY education on cosmology, planetary formation, simply physics, an understanding of our solar system, of gravity and more specifically of Relativity and Special Relativity.
The planets and the sun are in mutual orbits, with each (and many other objects) interacting with the others in various ways some to a much greater degree (Sun primarily, but second to that Jupiter) or to a lesser one (such as asteroids, dust particles, comets etc).
This is all well understood, and with all due respect has been for a long time. Although to be clear, when I say a long time I am speaking in terms of my life and yours, and our respective experiences. To be even clearer, it has been understood longer than you and I have been alive. Indeed, possibly longer than our lives combined.
And given the fact that you have access to the internet, it is reasonable for me to presume that you also have access to all that knowledge and have either chosen not to educate yourself on this area of ignorance or have hitherto been unaware that such things exist which in regards to understanding the truth value of the god claim suggests you are not yet equipped intellectually to be having such discussions nor making such statements.I am not a person who teaches children of any age, let alone those many years prior to pubescence and legal adulthood. Therefore I am not here to give you an education on matters which should be understood by any child of 8 to 10 with a basic education.
If your circumstances were or are such that you did not have access to such an education – I don’t want to sound rude but I reiterate my earlier point about having internet access.
Educate yourself.
The information which makes a mockery of your ridiculously naive claim about the planets is obtaining within minutes by typing searches and reading information from purely educational and non-religious websites. By this last I do not mean to suggest that there are not religiously-affiliated websites which do contain the accurate information, just that if you’re saying the things you are and you have internet access then it’s likely you have spent time on religiously-affiliated sites which do not contain such information (another assumption, equal risk, equal aim). -
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