DNA Proves Existence of a Designer

[Angrboda]

That's not a definition so much as it is an assertion of a paradigm case.  A variant of Ed Meese's comment about pornography that he "knows it" when he sees it.  In general it tells us nothing about what specification is, and as it is in effect trying to illuminate the general by reference to the specific, it can never in itself provide a working definition of what it means for information to be specified.  Citing paradigm cases offers us no clue as to how we should reason about non-paradigm cases on the basis of paradigm cases.  In particular, DNA is so unlike a Shakespearean sonnet that such a statement is as close to useless as you can possibly be.  And in particular, you don't actually have evidence that Shakespearean sonnets themselves are specified as it is possible that the sonnets were produced by an entirely random procedure.  Which of course was Dembski's first line of attack wherein he attempted to equate improbability with design.  Given the unfitness of probability as a criterion for design, he came up with the notion of specificity which he has never clearly defined, nor produced an actual application of its definition.  That you sit here with the chutzpah to suggest that you can show the meaning of specification in sufficient detail and rigor that it could be applied blindly without foreknowledge of the conclusion is nothing more than the sheerest folly of an incompetent and ignorant man.

The heart of the question is "characterized" in what way?  You haven't given us a specific definition of the specific way in which you are claiming sonnets and DNA are characterized.  That would require giving the characteristics which imply design, and those which do not.  You have not done so.

They are like a sonnet in that specific instructions are found in DNA to encode for proteins.  The information is functional.

Saying that they are specific as a way of defining what specific means is pointless. Define function without reference to teleology or else you're just reasoning in a circle. Function is an artifact of interpretation, it is not a self-standing characteristic of its own. I have a rock which functions as a doorstop. Nothing specific about it. Until you can explain how my rock functioning as a doorstop is different from DNA functioning to bring about lungs and wings and hearts and brains, then all you've got is a placeholder. For what it's worth, google tells me that function is defined as, "an activity or purpose natural to or intended for a person or thing." That behaving in the way chemicals do is natural to DNA does not distinguish it from the wind which does what it does because chemicals in the form of gases naturally do what they do. Using that as a definition is vacuous, as all things do the activities natural to them for they can do no other. Thus it does not serve as an acceptable demarcation. And talk about what something's purpose or someone's intention for something would be is not a property of the thing itself and so cannot serve as a characteristic distinguishing specified from non-specified things, as my rock-cum-doorstop readily shows. What definition of function did you think you were appealing to here?