The Silliest Thing Yet, or Sheer Genius?

Stephen Meyer, Discovery Institute cofounder and major IDist, in support of the Designer on this somewhat trying day, offers this amazing discovery: Meyer proves that information of any sort, not just complex specified information, comes from out of this world! Meyer’s impeccable proof is so astonishing in its simplicity that it can be explained to a first grade class! Here it is.

Stephen Meyer, explaining why biological information cannot originate through a materialistic process, said:

One of the things I do in my classes to get this idea across to students is I hold up two computer disks. One is loaded with software the other one is blank. And I ask

“What’s the difference in mass between these two computer disks as a result of the difference in the information content that they posses?”

And of course the answer is zero - none. There is no difference as a result of the information. And that’s because information is a massless quantity. Now if information is not a material entity, then how can any materialistic explanation explain its origin? How can any material cause explain its origin. And, this is the real fundamental problem that the presence of information in biology has posed. It creates a fundamental challenge to the materialistic evolutionary scenarios because information is a different kind of entity that matter and energy cannot produce. uhm  In the nineteenth century we thought that there were two fundamental entities of science: matter and energy. At the beginning of the 21st century we now recognize that there is a third fundamental entity, and it’s information. It doesn’t - it’s not reducible to matter, it’s not reducible to energy, but it is still a very important thing that is real, we buy it we sell it, we send it down wires. Now what do we make of the fact that information is present at the very root of all biological function? [picture of DNA] That in biology we have matter we have energy but we also have this third, very important entity, information? The biology of the information age I think poses a fundamental challenge to any materialistic approach to the origin of life.

This is a quiz. You have until sometime Monday morning to say if this is for real. Which is it, why, and how sure are you? Only your first answer counts toward your grade.

The answer is now posted, in Comment #167968 below. Per that comment, slight correction is made to the Meyer quote. The sense of it is unchanged.