Well, every message can be hidden in white noise. If you have the decryption key you can access it if not it's just white noise. In the first case you can decode the message so it has meaning to you but in the latter case you can't "read" it so it has no meaning from your point of view.
So make sure you keep 'information' and 'meaning' appart.
With the hope that an intellectual discussion is possible on this forum, I will attempt to get back to my original question,
"How does the theory of evolution account for the creation of new information?"
Several people have asked me to define information and have suggested that I am confusing information with meaning. It has further been suggested that all of the information that now exists in the universe was present at the beginning and that it has simply changed in form, much like the 1st law of thermodynamics, although no basis has been given for this.
As far as the definition of information goes, I accept the
American Heritage Dictionary's definition.
At one level (definition 3 from the dictionary), information is just a bunch of facts. By this narrow definition, the following statement:
Put the plate on the table.
has the same information content as
Qvu uif qmbuf po uif ubcmf..
Both have the same number of letters and spaces and in the same proportions. However, people who speak english know that there is additional information contained in the first collection of letters: information about an object (the plate), what to do with it (put), where it should be done (on the table). This is the type of information that definitions 1 & 2 refer to, i.e., knowledge derived from instruction.
Someone will say that this is meaning, not information. I disagree. This type of information
has meaning to english-speaking people, but it is still information, it is not merely meaning. It is an
instruction , i.e., imparted knowledge. Furthermore, this information is
not able to be ascertained merely from the positions and frequency of the letters. It is in
addition to it. This information is
encoded into the letters in the code called the english language.
This is analagous to DNA. DNA consists of a series of nucleic acids (letters) arranged in a certain way so as to encode information (instructions; imparted knowledge) that various cellular mechanisms utilize to build proteins. This information cannot be ascertained simply from an examination of the positions and frequencies of the nucleic acids. It requires, in addition, something that understands the code.
Therefore, I stipulate that the DNA of a living organism contains more information then an equivalent quantity of DNA that consists of a random series of nucleic acids. This additional information is what is meant by the genetic code.
Evolutionary theory requires that the information (instructions) contained in the genetic code (knowledge imparted to the cell) are the product of purposeless natural forces. Therefore, by extrapolation, evolution proposes that all knowledge and instruction (and ultimately meaning) are the product of purposelessness. The whole of human experience with language, as well as computer algorithms and information theory, are in direct conflict with this requirement of evolutionary theory. It is not an argument from ignorance.
If I may recommend
this reference; it's rather more pertinent to technical discussion. It contains an interesting sentence:
Pure and unqualified information is an unwarranted abstraction.
In any case, as has been pointed out to you, there are processes, accepted as natural, that increase so-called biological information.
Consider another case. Water is unoriented but ice has a crystaline orientation. This orientation is information about the ice, right? When water freezes to ice, where does this information come from?
A photon is polarized. You pass it through a polarizer at 45deg. With equal probability it either passes or is absorbed. This is information about the photon, right? Where did it come from?