Ed

The loss of information is in the genetic code not necessarily in the complexity of the result because organisms are amazingly versatile. But any loss of information in the long run will result in a macroevolutionary dead end.

lpetrich

What a big load of sauropod dinosaur dung (if you think that sweeping up after elephants is something, feel fortunate that sauropods are now extinct)

Ed seems to think that all mutations destroy information, though he does not tell us exactly what he means by "information".

If one means by that the number of bits needed to specify a genome in nucleotide-by-nucleotide fashion (2 bits per nucleotide), then many mutations keep the amount of information the same, and some mutations actually increase it.

I think that Ed ought to take some courses in Computer Science, especially some courses related to data-compression algorithms; he might actually learn something about "information".

Ed

Actually these particular gaps have grown over time and more research. Nevertheless it is possible they will disappear but a Creator is the most logical conclusion from the existence of these gaps. And then once one has shown that a creator can logically exist and then try to communicate with him, for most people his existence is confirmed by experience.

Quote:

lp: Consider the case of inorganic vs. organic compounds, which started about 2 centuries ago or thereabouts. That division was originally associated with the belief that the latter kind could only be created either from other organic compounds or by living things. This closely parallels Ed's viewpoints about life and personality, that life only comes from life and personality only comes from personality.

However the division is much greater than organic vs. inorganic.

Quote:

lp: However, in the early 19th cy., a chemist took some ammonium cyanate, generally considered inorganic, and produced urea, generally considered organic. This has been followed by numerous other syntheses of organic compounds, and the distinction has been reinterpreted.

Yes, but going from organic compounds to even simple living organisms in an unfriendly to life environment is a tremendous leap.

Quote:

Jack: ... What you're saying is equivalent to "factories cannot produce automobiles because factories aren't mounted on wheels". ... Ed: No, you have misunderstood the law of sufficient cause. Factories are adequate to produce automobiles because they are guided by intelligent beings (human factory workers and automobile engineers), so my point is not refuted. Because by looking at characteristics of life and personal beings plainly require an intelligence, ie DNA a complex languagelike code. In any other circumstance the finding of such a code would immediately be recognized as a product of intelligence. But because it is in "nature", an intelligent cause is automatically ruled out without any rational basis for doing so. lp: There are good reasons, such as biogeography; many islands are inhabited by distinctive species that are often closely related to those in nearby continents -- species that could have naturally arrived at those islands. Thus, the only warm-blooded land animals that one finds are flightless birds, which look as if their ancestors could have flown to those islands. That is because some small rodents (for example) floating in a log would have starved after a few days or weeks as a result of their high metabolic rate, while cold-blooded animals like turtles and lizards could simply slow down for the duration of the voyage.

Huh? Your response makes no sense to what I posted. Please reread carefully what I posted.

Quote:

lp: This is very difficult to explain with the hypothesis of some superpowerful creator -- even such finite ones as extraterrestrial visitors -- except if one subscribes to some version of Philip Gosse's created-appearance hypothesis. This is because such an entity/entities would not be limited by the ability of its creations to travel.

Again this is irrelevant to my above post. But as I have stated before the animals scattered over the earth according to their species specific ecological requirements.


[b] Loss of information is similar to the loss of meaning of the sentence because the genes must also be expressed in the proper order.

Ed

Hello Oolon. There is are several possible explanations. First, it may only be incomprehensible gibberish because we have not yet discovered what its function is and the repetitions may also have a function that we have not yet been discovered. Or they may be the result of mutations, the scriptures dont say that humans are immune to mutations.

lpetrich

How are they supposed to have grown? All the change I've ever seen is the gaps shrinking (RNA world, earliest Big Bang, ...)

Ed, how are you so sure that the Big Bang had not been caused by Tootchko the Magnificent, who creates Universes just for the fun of it? Or that time-traveling extraterrestrial visitors had not been responsible for the origin and some of the evolution of Earth life?

What evidence? Is this anything like Hillary Clinton's conversations with Eleanor Roosevelt?

From the vantage point of 2 centuries later.

(stuff about a "law of sufficient cause" deleted; Ed waves it around as if it was a good substitute for determining whether some cause can really cause some effect.)

Ed has completely ignored my discussions of biogeography. Plants and animals are usually distributed over a fraction of the range that they can survive and thrive in, sometimes a very small fraction. Rabbits have been very successful in Australia, almost too successful, even though they had been introduced in 1859. And alongside rabbits are cows, sheep, pigs, dogs, foxes, camels, water buffalo, cactus plants, etc. I can quote legions of other examples; Ed, I hope that you are capable of understanding my discussion.

"Junk DNA" got its name because much of it has no clear function -- if any at all. Some junk DNA is pseudogenes, genes that can no longer be expressed.

And where does the Bible mention mutations?

RufusAtticus

Nope. It's pretty certain that Junk DNA has absolutely no purpose. Why is this? Well, most Junk DNA, like the ALU repeats in Humans, consists of regions of repetitive DNA whose sequence does not matter. If it served any regular function in the cell, than we should observe selection acting upon their sequence. However, mutations in Junk DNA are neutral, i.e. they don't make a bit of difference to the individual.

Pseudogenes are the result of mutations; however, the vast majority of Junk DNA consists of repeated sequences whose existance is not the result of simple mutations. Junk DNA is a very complex subject. I won't burden you with anymore complexities, since you would probably need a collegete education in Genetics to fully understand it. Intellegent Design/creation offers not explainatory reasons for the garbage and leftovers that we find in genomes.

-RvFvS

Oolon Colluphid

We know what DNA does. It codes for proteins. The stuff in question does not. Not only does it not code for proteins, it has none of the 'on'and 'off' paraphernalia that genes require to work. It does nothing except get copied down generations. It is not even there to mop up mutations by giving a bigger target for them (kind of hiding the important stuff amongst the rubbish to make it harder to find), since the chances of a mutation are the same anywhere in the genome -- the more DNA there is, the more mutations, simple as that.

In humans, there is a group of non-coding DNA chunks called Alu sequences that are repeated over a million times, and this one family alone accounts for about 5% of our DNA. In the well-studied fruitfly Drosophila, there are three pieces of so-called ‘satellite DNA’, just seven (IIRC) ‘letters’ long. They do not spell out any amino acid. And they are repeated eleven million, 3.6 million and 3.6 million times. They make up 40% of the fly’s genome. Care to hazard just what sort of function these have except to make the genome bigger? Maybe creationism can help us here, since geneticists are at a loss to find a function for them. You do realise that using more materials than are necessary is not good design, don’t you?

Both correct. Mutations -- copying errors -- such as duplications can account for junk DNA. That’s part of evolution. And scriptures don’t mention mutations at all... and so are useless as a source of genetics information.

Since humans aren't immune to mutations, perhaps you'd care to explain why we share several such mutations in otherwise identical non-functional DNA with the other great apes? Remember that the patterns in DNA are copied down generations, even into separated lineages.

Or, the same point from a different direction: why did your hypothesised creator condemn people with inadequate diets to scurvy, by breaking the gene we possess which in other mammals is used in vitamin C synthesis? Is it not odd that he gave this same present-but-broken (broken in the same way) gene to chimpanzees and gorillas, and only them?

Oolon

[ February 27, 2002: Message edited by: Oolon Colluphid ]</p>

Ed

Actually I made a mistake, it is streptomycin. One study I gave above in an earlier post. Another older one is Davies and Nomura "The genetics of bacterial ribosomes" (1972) Annual Review of Genetics, vol. 6, pp. 203-234.

Ed

How do you know? Actually there are scientists that claim to have found fossil pollen in Cambrian strata. Also an expert on the Grand Canyon has photographed hooflike foot prints in strata that predates any quadrapeds by millions of years. And even if there are no "out of place" fossils, that is not surprising given that the conditions for fossilization are rare. And the numbers of animals that would have reached beyond most of their group would have been small. Also look at the coelacanth, no fossils for 65 million years and yet it was living all that time. If one had been found say 50,000 years old would it have been considered "out of place"?

Quote:

Jack: The odds against this arrangement occurring by accident are truly astronomical, greatly excceeding (for instance) the estimated number of atoms in the Universe. It's rather like arguing that the Dead Sea Scrolls are blank parchments stained with beetle droppings which coincidentally spell out Hebrew words.

See above about the coelacanth.

Quote:

jack: And you STILL haven't addressed the issue of GRASS, Ed. It only appears in RECENT strata. According to your theory, grass didn't grow in lowland areas in Biblical times, but only on high ground! Even grass POLLEN magically levitated from mountain to mountain without a single grain falling in the lowlands. And these grassy mountains were presumably the home of the great Himalayan Mountain Clam and other oddities...

I never said that grass didnt grow in lowland areas in biblical times. But as a general rule that is true depending on the species. Lowlands are generally forest. The chance of finding single fossil grains is astronomical. Freshwater clams living in highland streams is hardly an oddity. The Himalayan Mountains probably rose after the flood however.

Quote:

jack: And when the Flood struck, icthyosaurs and plesiosaurs magically lost the ability to swim.

Hardly, though they probably were slower than dolphins and whales.

[b] Why the personal attack? You are starting to turn into a Rimstalker clone!

Quote:

Ed: What faking of geological evidence? Since we dont really know when the flood occurred, ie, it could have been "hundreds of millenia" ago, and it only lasted a year out of geological column of millions of years, there may not really be much evidence in the geological record. jack: "hundreds of millennia" is less than a milion years. There is plenty of evidence of much lesser cataclysms that happened in the more distant past, like the demise of the dinosaurs.

Yes, but those lasted much longer and in some ways may have not been "lesser".

[b] Not necessarily. For example, say Robert E. Lee's son was my great grandfather, therefore Robert E. Lee became the ancestor of Ed when his son was born at age 35.

lpetrich

Does anyone know all thus but Ed's creationist friends?

However, the present-day Coelacanth is a deep-sea fish, meaning that it could easily escape being caught and seen.

Which does not explain why flowering-plant pollen is only found in strata starting in the late Jurassic.