Complex specified information is the hallmark of intelligent activity.
Randomness (chance) is capable of producing alphabetic strings like
"lafhjioenamn;g" and law (necessity) can produce repetitive strings
like "m,m,m,m,m,m,m,m," but only intelligent activity can produce "Yankees
win the series!". As William Dembski demonstrates in "The Design Inference"
(Cambridge, 1998), identifying such "specified complexity" is a reliable
way to detect intelligent design.
But is there information in nature?
Oxford scientist Richard Dawkins writes "When you eat a steak, you are
shredding the equivalent of more than 100 billion copies of the Encyclopedia
Britannica" (The Blind Watchmaker p.18). And Microsoft's Bill Gates
notes, "Human DNA is like a computer program but far, far more advanced
than any we've ever created."
DNA Image created by Discovery Media Productions