“Scientists who have their satellite dishes pointed toward the sky in the hope of hearing from intelligent life out there know how to distinguish incoming messages from background noise. Otherwise, there would be no point. We know what information looks like, and we know what kind of source it comes from. This is because information is not made out of matter — rather it is matter that is organized in a particular way. If a scientist studying static from solar flare activity was to discover that all his printouts kept repeating the St. Crispin’s Day speech from Henry V, his conclusion would not be that ‘given infinity and randomness, this was bound to happen sooner or later.’ And one strand of DNA is not just one speech from Shakespeare — it is the whole library” (Letter From a Christian Citizen, pp. 85-86).
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