ABSTRACT
I want next to consider how materialism, even on its own terms, has no way to block the flow of novel information into the universe from outside. Information, for materialism, is supposed to track physical causality. This means no information transfer without a corresponding transfer of material energy. Yet materialism doesn’t merely make information transfers depend causally on transfers of material energy. Materialism regards the world as a closed nexus of material causes operating by unbroken natural laws (these laws are nonteleological).1 The materialist universe is a causally closed universe. Causal closure, for the materialist, rules out not just information transfers unmediated by material energy transfers but also information entering this causal nexus from outside. For materialism, there is no outside. Materialism therefore urges not just causal closure but also informational closure. In other words, the world operates exclusively by material causes inherent in it, and any information in the world is likewise inherent in it or is manufactured from preexisting information by those material causes.2
