In a short article posted recently at Reasons to Believe Scholars’ blog, I present some conceptual considerations of information, nature and life.

The question of the significance of human existence comes sharply into focus as we consider the origin of life itself. Do the laws of nature support the origin of life from nonlife, or do they argue against it? In order to address this question, it is helpful to consider a defining characteristic of all living things, namely their phenomenal information content. Naturalistic explanations attempting to reach the heights of information content found in even the simplest living thing have appealed to “dumb luck” or to some unobserved natural law. However, consideration of the known and observed laws of physics in conjunction with the finite limits of “chance” within our universe appear to rule out any natural origin of the vastly complex biomolecular metropolis found within the cells of life.
The information content of the universe exponentially increased with the formation of the first living organism. Since natural processes always work to lower the information content of any closed (or effectively closed) system over time, the origin of life represents an unnatural event in the history of our universe.
See full article at Reasons to Believe Scholars’ Blog