Intelligence Generates Information & its Encoding Convention

The following snippet of a post entitled 'Information, Materialism and Free Will' appeared in Dembski's Uncommon Descent blog.

The generation of information where none existed, as well as the accompanying coding convention and information transmitting mechanism, is perhaps the best evidence for an intelligent cause of life. The italicized blog reference follows.

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.