Nice post. Informed and well presented.
I think in the materialist paradigm the functional information would come first.
The functional information in this view is inherent in the structure.
I believe that the encoder and decoder functions would not be considered as separate and would come third, with the encoder being second, but second not with an encoding function, but with self propagating function.
And in this we are talking about RNA, not DNA.
Your comments about DNA are true and it is amazing. It is even more so with RNA, which is very important in cell function.
Adherents of evolutionism really don’t seem to appreciate the complexity and what I’ll call majesty that life presents.
I can’t even fathom how they could hope to reduce the complexity of it to a simpler form.
Ok, consider that perhaps you start with only RNA as a primordial situation. It’s still pretty useless unless it can replicate. Which means the RNA, which has no intelligence, would have to somehow create a ribosome to manufacture the proteins that it needs to replicate itself?
We do have intelligence, but we still can’t create a ribosome if we wanted to, so how can a dumb piece of RNA, that has no idea what a ribosome is, or that it might need one, going to manage such a feat?
You opponents of evolution really don't seem to appreciate the complexity and what I'll call the majesty that God's design presents.