The existence of information is a fundamental refutation of materialism.
Information has no mass. It has no physical dimensions. And it can exist in multiple places at the same time. It has no physical or materialistic properties whatsoever. Put a gigabyte of information on your computer’s blank hard disk, and check out how much more the disk weighs. Back up your hard disk and that information will exist in two places at the same time. You can transmit that information at the speed of light (at which speed nothing with rest mass can travel).
Life is not fundamentally based on atoms, molecules and chemistry. These represent the media and low-level mechanism in which life’s information is stored and expressed.
As to the question of determinism (a conclusion frequently derived from a materialistic worldview) and free will, I propose the following: Unless the choices people make can be predicted with certainty, we have the functional equivalent of free will, which is all that matters in real life. Without the supposition of, and existence of functional free will, life would be absurd and unlivable.
This is why the question of materialism versus design is so important. It impinges upon everything that ultimately matters. Are we fundamentally information-based, non-material free agents, or are we natural-law-based, biochemical automatons?