pangloss

As creationists are so fond of mathematics this and mathematics that, I am surpised that none fo the "no new information" crowd seems to know thaqt Kimura demonstrated mathematically in 1961 that mutation plus natural selection does generate "new" information.

Deny the past, reinvent the future!

MrDarwin

Here's a very general hypothetical example: suppose an organism produces a gamete that has one gene with a mutation: a single base substitution that alters the expression of that gene such that it produces a slightly different enzyme, which works in a slightly different way. We already know that such changes happen frequently, and to the best of our knowledge, such changes are random and spontaneous. It is not a stretch to hypothesize that such genetic changes occurred in the past, and were likewise random and spontaneous. Now, two questions:

1. Is this new information?

2. Can we determine the cause of this change? If it is not actually random and spontaneous--if some unseen hand has reached into the organism's genome and produced an intentional change--how would we know? And more importantly, how could we ever test such a hypothesis?

For the scientist, such a hypothesis is entirely unnecessary because we know that such changes have many different results. Some are harmful, some are beneficial, some can be either harmful or beneficial under different conditions, some can be entirely neutral. We can detect no pattern to the changes. But looking backwards into the past, such changes seem to have been almost entirely beneficial, because the organisms for which they were not have left no record and no descendants. Scientists interpret this pattern in an entirely naturalistic way. And for the ID crowd has presented no compelling reasons to interpret it any differently.

-DM-

The broken links on the Philip E. Johnson page have been fixed.

Offsite links keep changing, unfortunately, and it is impossible to keep them up to date--especially if they go unreported. Please report broken links in Bugs, or in Feedback, or via e-mail to me.

Thanks.

-Don-

theyeti

Here's an AE thread where numerous examples of increases in "genetic information" are catalogued: The Origin of "Information" via natural causes.

While one can play the "information" definitional game if one wants, these examples clearly show that by any relevant metric, evolutionary processes can result in an increase in functional complexity.

theyeti

luvluv

Coragyps:

Well, everything else you posted was obviously greek to me, so I don't see what the point of that display was.

Firstly, I am of the impression that gene copying does not add information to a genome, it merely REPRODUCES existing information. I was also under the impression that mutation does not actually add information (specified, functional, complexity) to the genome, it adds MISINFORMATION. It's hard for me to believe without a LOT OF PROOF that the same process that occasionally produces kids with six fingers or an extra head, can also (unguided) produce a photocell, for example.

There is a difference between screwing up something that's already present and functioning, and in CREATING something which has a specific useful function.

I speak as a layman, of course.

Doubting Didymus:

Regardless, I believe that ID does not consider speciation to be the central problem with evolution. From what little I've read (mostly Johnson's stuff) the problem of information creation is supposed to be the big bone of contention. Frankly, that is what I've always doubted about evolution myself. It seems believable to me so long as we are talking about limbs getting bigger orr necks getting longer. But once we start talking about eyes (or photocells) emerging from no precursor SEVERAL DIFFERENT TIMES, or things like the human brain or the first living cells... frankly I don't see how anyone can believe that there isn't any design behind any of it. To me we just all work a little to well to be accidents. Okay, maybe we aren't products of a perfect intellect (or at least, we weren't designed so well that this is what we must infer) but clearly if you can say that we don't work well enough to be the work of perfection, surely we work too well to be the work of accidental mindless processes?

1) How exactly does this happen? How does natural selection "make it do something different"? Natural selection can't do something like that, if I understand it right. Maybe you mispoke here.

2) Has this ever happened that we can observe? I mean with the two proteins having identical functions and then splintering off to perform different functions?

Still, I don't see how anyone can appeal to this process to explain EVERYTHING simply on the basis of the evidence. I think Johnson is right when he says that in addition to the evidence it takes a very strong prior commitment to naturalistic philosophy to convince a person that evolution is the whole show.

For one, all of these steps presuppose an existing system of genetic information, which ITSELF displays the appearance of design. Mutations can't occur without a system of genetic copying. How did genetic copying come about? Mutations? It's circular. (I know what you're going to say, "that's origin of life not evolution!" The point still stands.)

But that is kind of my main contention. I have a feeling that the transition from just an antenna like appendage to a "sensory phospholipid membrane protein receptors that makes it stimulated by photons" is a WHOLE LOT more complicated to say than it is to actually accomplish in nature step by step.

This is kind of Johnson's point. A hypothetical scenario as to how such a thing could have happened is trotted out, with no evidence, and if your commitment to naturalism is strong enough you will believe that such a thing happened not only once, but MULTIPLE TIMES, solely based on a priori philosophical NECESSITY (if there is no intelligent designer, then this is how it must have happened). But if you do not rule out an intelligent designer, and you are presented with the fact that eyes came about SEPERATELY in different organisms, which worldview seems to better accomodate the facts?

1) With no intelligent guidance, eyes accidentally evolved in multiple organisms.

2) Sight was designed.

But I'm going to be stubborn here and have you explain how the first photocell emerged. I said I didn't know how the eye could form by step by step gradualism, and I am not changing the subject by asking you how the first step occured. You were the one who trotted out the steps, not me, and I am not obligated to conduct my argument in the way that will most easily accomodate you. I don't have a theory, you do, so it's your job to defend your position.

What? Why not?

You don't ask the same for the claims that ID'ers and creationist make?

Can I ask you a serious question?

Why should they believe it if you don't have any evidence for it?

Vorkosigan:

By Darwinism, I only mean broadly the naturalistic explanation for the origin of species.

What was taken for granted was that intelligence was not necessary to explain life and it's diversity. I was not speaking of any individual mechanism. What I'm asking is was this idea ever really challenged seriously in a scientific context, or was it simply assumed to be true by scientists?

Mr. Darwin:

Unless I'm missing something, these are the questions I have been asking you. Why are you asking them now to me?

How could (1) ever possibly be experimentally tested and verified?

How do you really know that (2) does not have limits, which is what the creationists claim?

If I'm reading correctly, what creationists (and ID'ers to a certain extent) ask is for proof of the SUFFICIENCY of mutation to create the functional diversity we see all around us. The peppered moth experiments and the finch beak experiments do not at all impress me as sufficient proof for the claim that EVERY SINGLE ASPECT of EVERY SINGLE ORGANISM IN THE WORLD was brought about by gradual accumulation of mutations. There has not been given to me enough information to cause me to have to make that conclusion. I question whether such information even exists, but certainly I've never encountered it. Again, I think Johnson is right that this kind of evidence is only sufficient if you already believe in evolution and are simply looking for confirmation.

Irreducible complexity sounds like a compelling concept (though I haven't read Behe's book). But the problem is that evolutionsts will simply appeal to ignorane and claim that there IS a way for any apparently irreducibly complex function to have evolved gradually, only they don't know it yet. There is no reason for an evolutionist ever to conceded that something is actually irreducibly complex when they can retreat to the appeal to future knowledge. There will never be a day when a commited enough naturalist cannot say "We don't know how it formed YET, but one day we will know."

For what would confirm evolution, I would expect our landscape to be UTTERLY LITTERED with transitional fossils so numerous that we could hardly categorize ANY two fossils as being members of the same species. When you look at the diversity of life, and see that these are simply the end of lines of even GREATER diversity that existed in various forms, then one should not be able to play in the street without tripping over a transitional fossil. To me, that's the long and the short of it. It seems like Gould tries to make this appeal himself, but since no one can come up with a mechanism to support leaps in evolution, no one will accept this, because such sudden bursts smack of the miraculous. However, I'm convinced that if anyone could find a purely materialistic mechanism for large changes in short bursts, this would immediately become the dominant theory because such a mechanism fits the fossil record more, despite how reluctant anyone is at present to admit that.

More in a sec...

MrDarwin

Because you haven't yet defined what you mean by "information". I'm trying to figure out just what you mean by that term. I gave an example, and asked if you would consider it to be "information".

This statement right here demonstrates that you haven't done any work with biology at the research level. I've got news for you, there are hundreds of thousands (probably millions) of species alive today, and the present-day landscape is littered with transitional critters, to the extent that biologists have considerable difficulty categorizing things that are alive today as different families or the same family, different genera or the same genera, or different species or the same species. This is particularly true in botany (my field), perhaps less so in zoology (and zoologists want to comment?).

But I thought that wasn't really the issue--you and IDer's don't have a problem with speciation, you have a problem with what is loosely termed "macroevolution", or the differences between higher taxonomic levels (e.g., differences between phyla, or between families).

So let me throw out another example, this one a little more specific: suppose a new plant species evolves that is pollinated by bats, from another species that is pollinated by hummingbirds. There are many minor differences, but here are some of the major ones: the bat flower produces more nectar, is pale yellowish green instead of red, and is larger, with a bigger opening, to accommodate the bat. Would it require new information as you define "information" for the plant to be modified to produce such flowers? And do believe such a change is possible by purely natural mechanisms?

You do realize, don't you, that Gould's theory of "punctuated equilibria" was formulated to explain the apparently sudden appearance of new species in the fossil record (i.e., the appearance of new organisms with relatively small differences from the ones that came before them), not the appearance of higher taxa (phyla, classes, etc.) and not "large changes in short bursts"? The gradual appearances of many major groups in the fossil record (e.g., tetrapods, birds, or mammals) are well-documented by transitional species in the fossil record, and while we may not be tripping over transitional fossils in the streets, many of the fossils are indeed very difficult to assign to one group or the other.

luvluv

MrDarwin:

By information I generally mean specified, ordered, functional complexity.

A mutation is not information as such because it is not specified, and more often than not it is not functional.

If someone is born with six fingers I don't consider that information creation, I consider that a copying error.

So you mean you didn't catch onto that by my repeatedly referring to myself as a layman and beginner?

Then how do you know they are transitional? If you don't know what family they belong to or what there direct ancestors are, then how do you know what they are in transition from or what they are a transition to?

Just because you find something you can't categorize does not make it transitional.

I actually have no idea. I do not know that a change in color from red to yellowish green could not be accomplished by a lack of information (like losing the gene for the color red or something). Producing more nectar and having a larger opening is fully consistent with the everyday variables within type that we see in humans and other animals, so that would not exactly be the kind of information I am talking about.

I'm asking how we get things like photocells from no photocells, or things like whatever the most primitive version of an olfactory nerve is from no olfactory nerve. I'm asking how do we get entirely new functions which cannot be explained solely as a variation in degree from a pre-existing function.

In fact, I guess that would be my definition of "new information": the creation of an entirely new function which cannot be explained solely as a variation in degree from a pre-existing function, which displays specified, ordered, complex, functionality.

This probably isn't the final word on it but it's a start. If I change or alter definitions it is not necessarily because I am evil or suffering from massive cognitive dissonance, it's because I don't know a lot about the field and I'm not prepared to give ready-made answers. I'm having to come up with this stuff on my own as you ask me for it.

MrDarwin

luvluv, I don't consider you evil, or even willfully ignorant but when you say things like:

and:

and:

and:

it sure sounds like you are defining "information" such that there could never be any naturalistic explanation for it. In other words, you've set up a bit of a catch-22 for us: provide you with examples of something in such a way that they fit your definition that makes such examples invalid from the get-go.

RufusAtticus

Okay, but what do you mean by "specified, ordered, functional complexity."

So information has to be "specified" by something. The task for you now is to demonstrate that the only way to explain the diversity of life is by "information" being "specified." You can talk all you want about "specified information," but if you want to claim that it refutes evolution you need to demonstrate how biology depends on it.

Because one does not need to know the direct descendents or ancestors, to determine that a fossil represents the transition from group A to group B.

Why? Evolution doesn't work by poofing new things into existance. Evolutionary mechanisms modify pre-existing structures. That is what we see from the evidence in nature. How many biological functions have you personally looked into which didn't depend on earlier models?

Well then such "information" is not biologically meaningful. No wonder why you can't find any biological explainations for it. The problem here is that you've set up an abstract defination of information that has no bearing on the real world of biology. That is one thing people like Dembinski haven't learned. Theoretical arguments are only as good as how well they relate to real life, and your concept of informatin doesn't relate at all.

luvluv

Okay, are either of you denying that sight, for example, is an enitrely new function which did not exist in the earliest form of life even in a preliminary form.

So how do you go from that to the first precursor of sight, since I guess you would agree that this has happened.

I'm just asking for what the first step might have looked like.

From what you guys are saying, it seems that we must assume that the VERY FIRST living thing had the precursors for sight, hearing, smelling, taste, etc... How is that possible?

As for information, nix the specified ordered complexity jazz.

I'll be satisfied to define information simply as the appearance of a new function which cannot be explained as a variation of a previously existing function.

By that I mean I see no problem with existing limbs getting bigger with time, because limb length will vary from individual to invididual. No problem here.

My problem is with things like the first photocell. From no photocell to the first photocell seems like an increase in information to me.