Information

https://barryhisblog.blogspot.com/p/information.html

Many creationists claim that "information"* in genomes cannot increase without the action of an intelligent manipulator. 

*From here on, I will leave the scare-quotes out for aesthetic reasons, but remember  they apply every time.

Let's look at this claim.

The first thing to note is that the claim is not accompanied by any definition of information and how to quantify it. You cannot make claims about whether something can increase or not if you don't know what it is, and you don't know how to quantify whatever it is in order to make such comparisons.

But let's play along.

A DNA sequence definitely does embody data, in the sequences of DNA bases, A, C, G, and T (and their paired bases). If we take a string of these bases, we could envisage, perhaps, a thought experiment in which there exists some algorithm that could analyse it and yield a measure of the quantity of information it contains.

So let's say we feed the string GATTACAACTGGCC into this algorithm and it spits out the result that the string has an information content of i where i is some numerical value. For those of you who are allergic to algebra, imagine that it is actually 3, or 27.54, or something. It doesn't matter.

Now dumb biological processes, in principle, can change any of these bases, insert more bases, or delete them. In other words, the sequence can, in principle, change to any other sequence. If i cannot increase, it means that the string cannot be changed, except into another string with information content less than or equal to i, and i is the maximum amount information that the string can contain.

Is this a sensible notion? Consider disadvantageous mutations. There is a mutation to the string GATTACAACTGGCC, yielding GATTATAACTGGCC. Either the mutation does not change the information content, or it reduces it. 

We can see that it is absurd to think that all mutations can preserve the information content, otherwise every possible string would contain the same quantity of information. Some mutations must reduce the information content. Let's say by a value of m. (Sorry. Algebra again.)

Now consider a back mutation to a string that was mutated. The information content was i - m. With the back mutation, it is now restored to i, an increase in information of m!

The idea that all genetics contain or the maximum possible quantity of information is absurd, and even contradicts the creationist myth of Da Fawl.