For those who struggle with science, allow me to offer a simplified explanation of Specified Complexity and its relevance for the creation / evolution debate.
A HELPFUL ANALOGY
Suppose you woke up one morning and when you entered the kitchen you saw individual pieces of your favourite alphabet cereal laid out on the bench with the following message: “GONE TO THE GYM PLEASE FEED THE CAT LOVE SARAH”. Would you surmise that the box of cereal had fallen over and the letters had randomly arranged themselves in this order? Of course not. This is clearly an intelligent message that originated from intelligence and not from random, natural processes. It is a message that demonstrates specified complexity. This means that the arrangement of letters demonstrates both complexity and meaningful specificity.
COMPLEXITY
In our analogy, the alphabet cereal letters are arranged in a very particular order. Another example of complexity would be if you found the alphabet cereal letters arranged thus: “ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ”.
This is a very particular, complex order that defies the statistical probability of it arising by random natural processes. The statistical probability of these 26 letters arranging themselves in this precise order is one chance in 10 to the power of 37 (that’s 10 followed by 37 zeros). The previous message, “GONE TO THE GYM PLEASE FEED THE CAT LOVE SARAH”, is even more complex, involving 45 letters and spaces arranged in a very precise sequence, and it has a statistical probability of arising by chance of a mere 1 in 10 to the power of 75. Just to give you an idea of how large that number is, the age of the universe according to evolutionary scientists is purported to be 14 billion years (which I happen to disagree with, but let’s go with that for the moment). This equates to 10 to the power of 17 seconds. So, even if our box of alphabet cereal could be knocked over once every second for the entire supposed existence of the universe, there is nowhere near enough time to generate our message about Sarah, the gym and a cat. It simply could not happen.
MEANINGFUL SPECIFICITY
In the previous two examples, both sequences of letters are complex but only the sequence about Sarah and the cat have meaningful specificity. The arrangement of letters, “ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ”, while complex (because it is recognisable as the standard alphabetical order), has no meaning beyond its obvious order. It does not convey a message. On the other hand, “GONE TO THE GYM PLEASE FEED THE CAT LOVE SARAH” not only has complexity, it also conveys a meaningful message. It does this in two ways; it correlates to extant physical entities in the real world (a gym, a cat and a person named Sarah) and it also imparts a specific instruction (“feed the cat”). Meaningful messages differ from mere patterned sequences because the meaning is independent of the physical arrangement. A meaningful message appeals to things outside itself such as intelligible English syntax and correlates with physical entities or abstract concepts in the real world.
Thus the message about Sarah, the gym and a cat is said to have specified complexity. Not only is it a highly improbable sequence of letters, but it also conveys an intelligent message that contains meaningful information (about Sarah’s current location) and specific instructions (about feeding the cat). This kind of specified complexity ALWAYS and ONLY originates from pre-existing intelligence.
APPLICATION
Human DNA is a complex molecule in the heart of almost every cell that contains a four-character information system (A, T, C, G). Essentially, it is a biological software program that regulates the formation and functioning of every cell in our body. DNA is both unbelievably complex and beautifully specified. In terms of COMPLEXITY, it consists of not merely 26 or 45 letters arranged in a precise order. Our DNA consists of 3.2 BILLION letters or pieces of genetic code, arranged in a very precise sequence. It is statistical nonsense to claim that this huge genetic coding somehow evolved and arranged itself into this precise order through random natural processes. If a 26 or 45 letter message defies statistical probability, how much more improbably is a 3.2 billion letter message?
But complexity is not the end of the story. DNA also demonstrates SPECIFICITY. By this we mean two things. Firstly, it conveys an intelligent, meaningful, highly detailed message that correlates with the biological structures of our bodies (proteins, amino acids, cells etc). Secondly, it INSTRUCTS those physical features in how to function. This kind of specificity defies all attempts at a naturalistic explanation because intelligent, meaningful information can only come from intelligence.
Bill Gates once compared human DNA to a computer software program, describing it as “extraordinarily complex”. He is right. Human DNA is millions of times more complex than the most sophisticated computer program ever devised by mankind. Random natural processes could never write a complex, functioning computer program. They are even less able to account for the origin of the most complex information system in the universe: human DNA.