Episode 193 – Eternal Information – Part 1 – What is Information
Welcome to Anchored by Truth brought to you by Crystal Sea Books. In John 14:6, Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” The goal of Anchored by Truth is to encourage everyone to grow in the Christian faith by anchoring themselves to the secure truth found in the inspired, inerrant, and infallible word of God.
Script:
In the beginning the Word already existed; the Word was with God, and the Word was God. From the very beginning the Word was with God.
The Gospel of John, Chapter 1, verses 1 and 2, Good News Translation

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VK: Hello and Happy New Year! I’m Victoria K. Welcome to Anchored by Truth brought to you by Crystal Sea Books. We’re excited to be with you at the start of this New Year and we pray that this year will bring joy and blessings to all our listeners, especially the joy of having a closer fellowship with our Lord Christ Jesus. Today on Anchored by Truth we’re going to start the new year with a new – and frankly novel series. As just about everyone knows, the Christian faith in America has been subjected to more challenges in the last decade than probably in the first two centuries of the country’s existence. So, as we open up this New Year we want to discuss a subject that has particular relevance in our day and time –being able to demonstrate that the Christian faith has a firm basis in reason and evidence. RD has entitled this series “Eternal Information.” So, we have RD who is an author and the founder of Crystal Sea Books, in the studio today. RD, why did you decide we need to take a special look at the topic of “information?”
RD: Well, I’d also like to say Happy New Year to everyone who is joining us here today. I wanted to spend a few episodes of Anchored by Truth focusing on information in part because of a book I came across not too long ago called In the Beginning was Information. The book was written by a German information specialist named Dr. Werner Gitt.

VK: Dr. Gitt was a director and professor at the German Federal Institute of Physics and Technology and he was the head of the Department of Information Technology there. Obviously, Dr. Gitt knows a thing or two about information.
RD: Obviously. And just obviously the title of Dr. Gitt’s book is a play on Genesis, chapter 1, verse 1 and the Gospel of John, chapter 1, verse 1 which we heard in our opening scripture today.
VK: In the New International Version, Genesis, chapter 1, verse 1 reads, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” Those are certainly two of the most famous verses in the Bible.
RD: Yes, they are. So, when I heard about Dr. Gitt’s book I became intrigued because just hearing the title made me look at those two verses in a different light. It’s not just the title calls to mind Genesis, chapter 1, verse 1 and John, chapter 1, verse 1. It’s that it made me start thinking about how the undeniable existence of information gives us a whole new way of demonstrating to the unbelieving world that it is impossible to form a coherent view of life and the universe without acknowledging the existence of God.
VK: And helping spread the awareness that you must acknowledge God to have a coherent worldview is one of the ideas that we focus on here at Anchored by Truth. And it’s become increasingly important even with the church. We live in an age where our historical cultural consensus has shifted. Some commentators have said that we are now living in a “post-Christian” world. For people who are not believers this means that they live in a world that has gone “beyond” the constraints and “narrowness” of Christianity. Fewer people, as a percentage of the population, belong to churches than in generations past, and many of the mainline churches are experiencing declines not only in membership, but in influence on society, government, education, family, and the culture as a whole. As we look around us we see that young people are far more consumed by the death of an entertainer than the death and resurrection of Jesus. We also see that more people are consumed by concern for temporary pleasures than their eternal destiny. This is obviously is dangerous to individual destinies but it is also dangerous to the destiny of our communities and nation.
RD: Exactly. People within the church have been warning of the danger we’re facing for decades but the danger has only grown during those decades. We want to point people back to the eternal truth that there is a God and that God has a plan not only for people but for communities, nations, and the world. But we don’t want to just proclaim the truth, though that is obviously where we must start. We also want to explain the evidence and reasons behind our belief. And it turns out that the concept of information forms an extremely powerful line of evidence that points to the fact that God existence can’t be reasonably denied without abandoning any claim of living a life guided by logic and reason. You know it’s not enough to simply point out the danger that comes from abandoning God. We have to do what we can to turn people away from the danger.
VK: And the danger posed by abandoning God has been recognized for quite a while now. Almost 3 decades ago, in their 1994 book, Handbook of Christian Apologetics, Peter Kreeft and Ronald Tacelli [TA-CHEL-EE], who are both professors of the philosophy of religion at Boston College, said the following:
“Western civilization is for the first time in its history in danger of dying. The reason is spiritual. It is losing its life, its soul; that soul was the Christian faith. The infection killing it is not multiculturalism – other faiths – but the monoculturalism of secularism – no faith, no soul. Our century has been marked by genocide, sexual chaos and money-worship. Unless all the prophets are liars, we are doomed unless we repent. . .The church of Christ will never die, but our civilization will. If the gates of hell will not prevail against the church, this world certainly won’t. We do apologetics not to save the church, but to save the world.”
VK: Well, before we go too much farther we want to acknowledge someone who has been very important to our show, Dr. Gregg Alexander. Dr. Alexander practiced medicine in Tallahassee, Florida for over 4 decades but more importantly for us, he led a Sunday school class in his church for more than 25 years. Dr. Alexander is extremely thoughtful and insightful. We are indebted to him because his counsel and insight especially about apologetics has been extremely valuable and elements of it are going to appear throughout this series. We may not always have time to acknowledge a particular example of his contributions so we just want acknowledge his importance and value right up front. So, how do you want to start?
RD: Well, let’s take a look at a seemingly innocuous example of something you hear every day that actually has profound implications. How often do you say to someone or have someone say to you “Send me your information.”
VK: I imagine that phrase “send me your information” is probably said thousands or millions of times a day all around the world.
RD: But what does it mean?
VK: For most people it means send me your “contact information” such as phone number, email address, possibly your job or office information and – these days rarely – your mailing address. In other words, “send me your information” is another way of saying tell me how I can get a hold of you.
RD: I agree. We ask for people to give us their information without a second thought. And similarly we don’t think very much about the way they are going to send that information. These days it will probably be electronically more often than not but even with electronic transmission the actual media will vary. Some people might use email, others text messages, and in some cases the two people won’t have to do anything at all. If they are close enough some cell phones might automatically exchange information with other phones.
VK: And, again, rarely people might send a card, business card, or even a letter to a physical address that would provide the information.
RD: Agreed. But the key thing to notice about any and all of these possibilities is that the thing that everyone wants, the information, has nothing to do with the form of transmission. The information will remain the same regardless of whether it’s emailed, sent via the post office or messenger, or even whether someone sent it using smoke signals, Morse code, or carved it on a clay tablet and dropped it off? The information, the object of the transmission, is completely independent of the mode of transmitting it from one party to another.
VK: So, what you’re saying is that the content of the information has nothing to do with the method of transmission. And, to carry that thought a little further, the information content has nothing to do with the matter or energy that goes into its production, transmission, or retention. We can type one set of characters on a keyboard and say one thing, and we can type another set of characters on that same keyboard and say something completely different. The same set of plastic, copper, and glass can produce a recipe for tiramisu or the instructions for building a nuclear bomb. We can use a pen and paper to send someone our address and phone number or to give them the location of buried treasure.
RD: Exactly. The nature or content of the information has nothing to do with the chemistry or physics used to produce, transmit, or store the information. The same chemistry or physics can produce treasure maps, diagrams for building houses or airplanes, or a formula for a life-saving medicine. You get the idea. So, the question arises then – exactly what is information?
VK: I see where you’re going. Information is real. Information has content. Information tells us what is going on in the worlds of chemistry, physics, or biology. But information is not dependent on any of those things. Information can affect chemistry or physics but it is not arise from chemistry or physics. I suppose another way of saying the same thing is that information is not dependent on the matter or energy but matter and energy are used in the transmission or reception of information. When you start to look at it closely information is a tricky sort of thing.
RD: Information is a tricky sort of thing because the information itself is non-material but we can perceive it, record it, store it, and transmit it by material means. The fact that information is non-material is a very important attribute to note. Information may be transmitted, stored, and received by material means but none of that affects the information itself. Nor does the type of material being used to transmit or store the information matter. The same chemical formula can be written on paper, appear on a computer screen, be etched into stone, or simply memorized by a person but the formula, the information, remains the same. The non-material nature of information is going to be key fact that we will revisit frequently during this series.
VK: Well, here is an obvious question. If information is non-material does that mean it’s spiritual? Christians, of course, acknowledge the reality of the spiritual realm. Ephesians, chapter 6, verse 12 is one of the best known verses in the Bible and it says, “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realm.”
RD: When we say that information is non-material we are definitely not saying that it is spiritual. By saying it is non-material we are noting that information as a component of the created order is present and evident in what we might call the natural world. It’s just that in the natural world information cannot be measured by any one of the same units that are used to measure and express the attributes of matter or energy.
VK: According to one of the articles that Dr. Gitt wrote for Creation Ministries International a physical magnitude is a “System of units that has seven base units: mass, length, electric current, temperature, amount of substance, luminous intensity and time. All physical quantities can be expressed in terms of one of these base units (e.g. area = length x length) or by a combination (by multiplication or division) of several base units (e.g. momentum = mass x length / time). This is not possible in the case of information and therefore information [does not possess] physical magnitude!”
RD: Exactly. Speaking precisely, information does not have any mass. It is massless. All matter involves mass which can be weighed in a gravitational field. Similarly, information, though it can be transmitted by energy, is not created by energy nor does it interact with energy. Thus, information can be distinguished from other massless entities such as photons, which are massless but which can be generated by matter and do interact with matter in the physical domain. We know from Einstein’s famous formula that matter and energy have a direct relationship with one another.
VK: You’re referring to Einstein’s famous formula from the Theory of Relativity “e=mc2.”
RD: Yes. But, so while information is non-material it is present and an integral part of the observable universe. But the spiritual realm that Bible recognizes is not part of the observable universe. In effect, there is a veil that separates the spiritual portion of God’s creation and the physical portion. We would not know about the spiritual portion if God had not chosen to reveal its existence in His special revelation, the Bible. This is quite different from information where we cannot avoid acknowledging its presence in the observable universe.
VK: In fact, if someone wanted to deny that information exists they would be using information to try to make their denial. Denying the existence of information is itself a form of information. As we have discussed at other times on Anchored by Truth the concept of information is self-affirming. It cannot be denied without at the same time being used. So, that answers the question of how information – even though it is non-material – is not the same as a spiritual entity. Information’s existence is easily, and non-deniably, discernible from observations of the physical universe. The spiritual dimension can only be known by a revelation from a spiritual being which God is. The Gospel of John, chapter 4, verse 24 tells us that “God is spirit.” So, where do you want to go from here?
RD: Well, I always think a good place to start when you’re looking at a concept is with defining some terms. So, let’s take a look at a couple of definitions for the term “information.” Why don’t you start by reading the definition of information from the Merriam Webster Dictionary?
VK: The online Merriam Webster Dictionary defines information as (1 ) knowledge obtained from investigation, study, or instruction; or (2 ) the attribute inherent in and communicated by one of two or more alternative sequences or arrangements of something (such as nucleotides in DNA or binary digits in a computer program) that produce specific effects.
RD: Right. That second portion of the definition is particularly intriguing because even the Merriam Webster Dictionary takes notice of the fact that DNA, which is a component of the cells of all living creatures, contains information. One of the episodes that we are going to do during this “Eternal Information” series is going to focus on the information present in biological entities – in living creatures. But for now let’s note that Merriam Webster notes that information is “inherent in and communicated” by “sequences” or “arrangements of something” and that those sequences or arrangements “produce specific effects.” Now let’s take a look at a definition for “information” that Dr. Gitt has expressed.
VK: In an article that Dr. Gitt produced for Creation Ministries International Dr. Gitt stated this: “…we developed an unambiguous definition of information: namely an encoded, symbolically represented message conveying expected action and intended purpose. We term any entity meeting the requirements of this definition as “universal information” (UI).” We’ll put a link to this article in the podcast notes that are available on certain podcasting apps.
RD: So, immediately we see some common elements between the Merriam Webster definition and Dr. Gitt’s definition of information even though Dr. Gitt is being more technical for purposes he comes to later in his discussion. Merriam Webster talks about “alternative sequences or arrangements of something …that produce specific effects.” Dr. Gitt speaks about an “encoded, symbolically represented message.” Merriam Webster says that the sequence or arrangement of something is intended “produce specific effects.” Dr. Gitt says that the symbolically coded message is “conveying expected action and intended purpose.” So, both of these definitions are pointing to some essential elements that are inherent in “information.” Information contains specified sequences, elements, codes, and symbols. And those specified sequences, elements, codes, and symbols have been arranged or encoded for a specific purpose to produce specific effects. So, in addition to the non-material nature of information another overarching concept that leaps out at us about information is that information is ordered, organized, and specified. We can be certain, then, that information is an expression of intelligence. It has to be. Information cannot be the product of mindless, random, or undirected activity of anything. Organization and randomness are the opposites of each other. Nothing random or chaotic is going to produce a sequence of codes or symbols that it intended to produce a specific effect.
VK: Your cat might walk across your computer keyboard and generate a series of letters on the screen and might even hit a button that generates a print command. But that does not mean that the series of letters or characters you see on the screen or the printed piece of paper constitutes information. The product of your cat’s activity on the keyboard is gibberish or nonsense. If the cat does enough walking on the keyboard it might by chance generate a recognizable word like “eat” or “to.” But that still does not make the cat’s production information. Information, as a component of the physical universe, possesses order, structure, specificity, and meaning. So, we’ve covered some important concepts today but is there anything else we need to discuss before we close for today.
RD: Yes. The big reason we are undertaking this series on information is not just to have a philosophical discussion about information but to point out that information points undeniably to existence of the God of the Bible. As we’ve been discussing information is always the product of intelligence. So, if information is present as a component of the observable universe that means that intelligence must be also. Let’s say this a little differently. Much of the time our contemporary culture views the universe as being a construct composed of matter, energy, time, and space. The most radical among us say that that is all that is present anywhere and by doing so they are trying to exclude the possibility of God’s existence as a reasonable proposition.
VK: One of the most common objections to acknowledging God is that if God can’t be seen or heard or touched then there is no evidence of God’s existence. That’s a common assertion today and is the attitude, usually unspoken, that underlies the assertion, “you have faith, but I have science.”
RD: Yes. Christians, by contrast, point out that not only do logic, reason, and evidence – and science - affirm God’s existence but the notion that God doesn’t exist always runs into irreconcilable conflicts and logical fallacies. This discussion of information is simply pointing to another one of those conflicts and fallacies. If it could be shown that the universe were the result of just matter, energy, time, and space ideas like the Big Bang theory and the General Theory of Evolution might be sensible. But as we have been discussing the universe cannot be reduced to being the product of just matter, energy, time, and space. The universe as we see it around us contains, and must contain, information.
VK: In effect, you’re saying that the observable universe goes beyond the material elements in its composition. That’s very similar to the question you sometimes ask about whether physics plus chemistry can produce biology. That’s the notion that undergirds the entire idea of evolution. The basic idea is that some chemical components eons ago randomly collided with each other. There was an energy source, though no one knows quite what it was, that somehow activated the chemical elements and voila – life started. But as you point out so frequently, chemistry plus physics does not equal biology. Chemistry plus physics plus information equals biology.
RD: Yep. The universe we see around us is more than just matter, energy, time, and space. Matter and energy are material components of the universe and the space-time continuum defines the boundaries within which matter and energy interact. But, at a bare minimum, those four components by themselves could never give rise to life, even if they could somehow explain all of the inanimate elements of the universe.
VK: So, the big idea that we wanted to introduce today is that information and its presence in the universe is another line of evidence that proves that if God did not exist the universe would not appear as we see it. Information is non-material and information always exhibits order, organization, specificity, and purpose. And those things require intelligence. Well, sounds like we’re in for quite a thought-provoking journey. Hopefully, not too many headaches. This sounds like a great time to pray. Today let’s listen to a prayer of praise of Adoration for the Creator God who set the cosmos into motion and established a home on the earth for His people as He prepares them for an eternity with Him in heaven.
---- PRAYER OF ADORATION FOR THE CREATOR
VK: We’d like to remind our audience that a lot of our radio episodes are linked together in series of topics so if they missed any episodes or if they just want to hear one again, all of these episodes are available on your favorite podcast app. To find them just search on “Anchored by Truth by Crystal Sea Books.”
If you’d like to hear more, try out crystalseabooks.com where “We’re not perfect but our Boss is!”
(Bible Quotes from the Good News Translation)
The Gospel of John, Chapter 1, verses 1 and 2, Good News Translation
Laws of information 1 (creation.com)
Laws of information 2 (creation.com)
We are less than dust (creation.com)