BolshyFaker

Ive got a debate in school coming up with a teacher who is a Creationist (and contaminates his lessons and the school with it).

My question is what evidence is there to refute the current Creationist objection to evolution that:

"The main scientific objection to the GTE (General theory of Evolution) is not that changes occur through time, and neither is it about the size of the change (so we would discourage use of the terms micro- and macro-evolution). The key issue is the type of change required — to change microbes into men requires changes that increase the genetic information content, from over half a million DNA ‘letters’ of even the ‘simplest’ self-reproducing organism to three billion ‘letters’ (stored in each human cell nucleus). Nothing in Lerner’s paper (or anywhere else) provides a single example of functional new information being added. To claim that mere change proves information-increasing change can occur is like saying that because a merchant sells goods, he can sell them for a profit. The origin of information is a major problem for the GTE."

Thats taken from an article on answersingenesis.com and I hadn't seen evolution considered in this way before. What are the objections to it?

Please help Im fairly confident on re-butting all other Creation arguments.

Coragyps

I found what I think is a fairly clear and obvious example of a mutation "increasing information." Abstract:
This was published in Science last October: vol 294, pp 158-160. They want actual money to let you read the article, but I can summarize it for you this evening after I get this "work" stuff completed for the day.

Oolon Colluphid

Bloody hell! I see you're in Liverpool.... ARRGH! Not another one!

Ref your question, you may find Richard Dawkins's article <a href="http://www.skeptics.com.au/journal/dawkins1.htm" target="_blank">The Information Challenge</a> of some use.

And get them to define 'information'!

Oolon

MrDarwin

Is this a teacher in a public school? If so, a complaint is in order.

Regarding "information", creationist like to make sweeping pronouncements about "molecules to man" but they tend to stay away from the specifics. Try to get the creationist to define just what is meant by "information" in the first place, and how one would measure its increase or decrease. Here are some examples that can be documented from actual research; do they count as "information" or not?

(1) a new morphological trait

(2) a new pigment, protein, or other biological chemical

(3) a new behavior

(3) increased tolerance to a pesticide or disease

(4) duplication of a particular gene or chromosome

(5) change (increase or decrease) in overall number of genes or chromosomes

(6) change in the frequency of alleles in a particular gene in a population

(7) a gradual change (over time and several generations) in the function of an organ

Good luck.

(edited because I can't count!)

[ March 18, 2002: Message edited by: MrDarwin ]</p>

MrDarwin

BTW I believe that creationists like to go on about "information" because it allows them to avoid such issues as the fossil record and common descent altogether.

theyeti

The creationist "no new information" argument is as BS as their "no transitional fossils" argument. Unless one adopts a very strange defintion of "information" (one that would probably be irrelevant to living things), there are numerous ways that it can increase. The most obvious is through duplication and subsequent neofunctionalization or subfunctionalization of the new gene. I've got an EndNote library of a few dozen references, and I'd be happy to email it to you if you'd like.

theyeti

BolshyFaker

Great start guys/gals. But does anyone have a simple, soundbite style answer to this question:

"Natural selection removes genes from the gene pool and there are insufficient (i.e. they are so rare) mutations to increase the information content of the genetic code from the bacterial level to the human level." - a.n. creationist (well, actually Ben Stevenson, but you don't know him anyway)

Is the amount of mutation and tendency for beneficial ones to be selected great enough to overcome redundant genes moving out of the gene pool?

theyeti

Redundant genes do become silenced (and sometimes deleted) over time. The silenced ones become pseudogenes, which provide powerful evidence of common descent. I would suggest that you bring up the pseudogene argument here, as they've already refuted one of their common retorts (that pseudogenes have some sort of function).

However, most gene duplicates tend to be preserved as functional. In organisms that have undergone polyploidy (a doubling of the whole genome), 70% of the new copies tend to be preserved. The rate of duplication is not rare either. When you combine polyploidy, whole and partial chromosome duplication, segmental duplication, single gene duplication, etc., you've got more than enough additional "information" to account for evolution. There are lots of ways that duplicates can evolve completely new functions; not just through point mutations, but also through things like exon shuffling and gene fusion.

If you just want a sound bite, simple say that the premise is false -- the "mutations" that increase information are not rare. Furthermore, there is little selective pressure to remove redundant information in anything but the smallest and fastest dividing organisms (e.g. bacteria). Most eukaryotes have tons of redundancies and various kinds of "junk" DNA. Other than that, you're going to have to roll up your sleaves and do some research. I will be happy to send you some stuff -- just ask.

theyeti

Oolon Colluphid

You could try asking Rufus or Morpho (theyeti’s already here), but one way to tackle it is thus:

"Natural selection removes genes from the gene pool..."

"Yeah, and...?"

"... and there are insufficient mutations to increase the information content of the genetic code from the bacterial level to the human level."

"Simple assertion. Provide some evidence of this."

Throw the ball back to him. He's arguing from personal incredulity.

As you are probably aware, he is just restating the obvious, that living things like humans are hugely improbable -– improbable, that is, to occur in a single jump. But that's not what evolution proposes. Could a bacterium mutate in one go into a human? Of course not. But could a human be derived from something very very like a human in a small step? Of course, if the required step is small enough. And so on back through millions of iterations.

Don't let the bastards get you confused. What's to 'overcome'? The 'bad' ones leave, and what they leave is the ones that work. And any few that work better. Selection won’t knock out the good ones, only the bad. And what you get after doing this millions of times is ones that are damned good at surviving, and what you see along the way is a lot of dead ends and extinctions (where the whole lineage fails).

cheers, Oolon

Oolon Colluphid

It's also worth noting that it is not mutation per se that adds information to the gene pool. As Dawkins says in the article I linked:

Mutations are fairly plentiful, but NS adds the information by only keeping what's useful, ie that which contains information.

Oolon