Xeluan

Hi Everyone,

What is the story behind the creationist argument that evolution can't add genetic information?

As I see it, its seems to come from a misapplication of some form of information theory. But the creationists never seem to explain in detail what they mean by "information."

How I see it is that evolution can (and has) altered genetic information. It doesn't matter whether information has been deleted of added. The genetic information has changed and this may lead to changes in the organism. I think part of the problem is that creationist view that Evolution is deeply intertwined with progress. Therefore if the gentic inforamation does not increase it is not progress there not evolution.

Could somebody explain if I am on the right path to understanding this creationist criticism?

Thanks,

Xeluan

tgamble

The story is that creationists are idiots.
Basically, variation is so obvious that even creationists can't deny it. So they have to find a way to prevent "real" evolution (ie. a rock turning into a dog). So they claim that only loss of information or resorting of information is possible and hence, only variation within a kind. Whatever a kind is.

Of course not. for the same reason they can't explain what they mean by kind.

It does to creationists.

well, species more accurately. But anyway, that's only variation within a kind.

The problem is that creationists have already reached a conclusion that they hold as absolute, unquestionable truth.

You seem to be IMO.

Hallucigenia

Hi Xeluan!

Yup and yup. See the <a href="http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/postmonth/feb01.html" target="_blank">February 2001 Post of the Month</a> at Talkorgins for a discussion about this very topic.

Quote:

Could somebody explain if I am on the right path to understanding this creationist criticism?

You seem to be on the right path. The "big deal", as far as creationists (specifically, the ID flavored ones) are concerned, and as near as I can tell, is that, since we have longer DNA strands than, say, a bacterium, we contain more information. However, by misapplying some information theory, as you noted, Dembski has concocted his "Law of Conservation of Information", which states that information can only come from information. That is, our added information can only be the result of a build-up of information.
However, the story goes, mutations can only result in the loss of information. I'm not exactly sure where this comes from, to be honest, except as another misinterpretation of Information Theory, as noted in the TO article. As such, natural selection cannot result in "more" information than was there originally, therefore we, having more information than "lower" organisms, cannot have evolved from them.

Of course, they seem to never have heard of "insertion" mutations, as just one example, wherein bases are added to a DNA strand, thereby increasing the total amount of information in the strand.

[ July 24, 2002: Message edited by: Hallucigenia ]</p>

RufusAtticus

Hi Xeluan.

Here is something from an email I sent to a 15-yro creationist.

INFORMATION
Individuals don't evolve. Populations do. So in linking information theory to evolution, you must consider the information in the population, which you do not do. Biologically, information can refer to different things. Pseudogenes, contain information about evolutionary history but not information that can be selected for. In the context of this discussion, it would be better for us to consider the genetic information underlying traits, with an interest in adaptable traits. It is difficult to determine a way to measure the amount of this information, but one possibility is the size of the proteome. This is the number of unique proteins produced in the population and includes all loci and alleles. Whenever a mutation produces a novel allele, it adds information to the population. In other words, there is a new trait for selection to act upon. Here are two examples of the effects of information in a population.

Jeff knows something about Gina: "Gina is neat." Thus he has information about Gina. Before he leaves town, Jeff replicates this information by telling it to two people, Nick and Randy. Because neither of them pays attention, they don’t replicate the information exactly. Nick thinks "Gina is sweat," and Randy thinks "Gina is near." We can measure the about of information about Gina by the number of non-redundant attributes people ascribe to her. Here, the amount of information about Gina has doubled: from "neat" to "sweat and near." Clearly when we remember that it is the population that’s important to evolution, it is obvious how mutations can add information for selection to act upon.

Take this example retrieved from LocusLink [7], the only difference occurs in the 7th codon (6th amino acid because the first one, 'm,' gets cut off). The letters refer to amino acids [8].
[code]
Human Beta-hemoglobin (HBB)
1 mvhltpeeks avtalwgkvn vdevggealg rllvvypwtq rffesfgdls tpdavmgnpk
61 vkahgkkvlg afsdglahld nlkgtfatls elhcdklhvd penfrllgnv lvcvlahhfg
121 keftppvqaa yqkvvagvan alahkyh


HBB-S
1 mvhltpveks avtalwgkvn vdevggealg rllvvypwtq rffesfgdls tpdavmgnpk
61 vkahgkkvlg afsdglahld nlkgtfatls elhcdklhvd penfrllgnv lvcvlahhfg
121 keftppvqaa yqkvvagvan alahkyh


HBB-C
1 mvhltpkeks avtalwgkvn vdevggealg rllvvypwtq rffesfgdls tpdavmgnpk
61 vkahgkkvlg afsdglahld nlkgtfatls elhcdklhvd penfrllgnv lvcvlahhfg
121 keftppvqaa yqkvvagvan alahkyh
</pre>[/quote]

Each allele does not encode the same information since each one produces a distinctly different product. A single point mutation has enough effect on the information contained in the genome that it can determine whether an individual dies from malaria or not. In the presence of malaria, HBB-S is maintained because of heterozygote advantage. However, HBB-C also offers resistance to malaria, but the most fit genotype is the homozygote.[9] It is expected to become the most common allele in parts of Africa if the environment stays the same. These mutations have clearly added new information to the population. Selection then acts on this new information, changing the make up of the population. Thus, evolution happens.

It is important to realize that evolution occurs even if information is lost. It also occurs when information is gain or without any change in the amount of information at all. Thus no-new-information arguments do not actually address evolutionary theory. By focusing on individuals and not populations, no-new-information claims never even get close to disproving evolution. In fact, the actual claim, when applied to biology, is that the information capacity of an individual's genome cannot increase. However, this claim is false because there are known types of mutations that can increase the length of the genome and thus its capacity to hold information. Ernst Mayr discusses this origin of new genes in his latest book.

“Bacteria and even the oldest eukaryotes (protists) have a rather small genome. . . . This raises the question: By what process is a new gene produced? This occurs, most frequently, by the doubling of an existing gene and its insertion in the chromosome in tandem next to the parental gene. In due time the new gene may adopt a new function and the ancestral gene with its traditional function will then be referred to as the orthologous gene. It is through orthologous genes that the phylogeny of genes is traced. The derived gene, coexisting with the ancestral gene, is called paralogous. Evolutionary diversification is, to a large extent, effected by the production of paralogous genes. The doubling sometimes affects not merely a single gene, but a whole chromosome set or even an entire genome.” [10]

7. <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/LocusLink/" target="_blank">http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/LocusLink/</a>
8. <a href="http://www.chem.qmul.ac.uk/iupac/AminoAcid/AA1n2.html" target="_blank">http://www.chem.qmul.ac.uk/iupac/AminoAcid/AA1n2.html</a>
9. Modiano D. et al. (2001) Haemoglobin C protects against clinical plasmodium falciparum malaria. Nature: 414 pp 305-308
10. Mayr E. (2001) What Evolution Is. Basic Books.

[ July 24, 2002: Message edited by: RufusAtticus ]</p>

KeithHarwood

Hey, this is a new insight, something I hadn't appreciated before. Thank you for pointing it out.

scigirl

Hello Xeluan,

I noticed this was your first post. Welcome to infidels! You can introduce yourself <a href="http://iidb.org/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=forum&f=43" target="_blank">here</a> if you like.

scigirl

Xeluan

Thank you scigirl. I've done so.

And thanks you everyone for the informational replies. Much appreciated (as is the validation that I was on the right track. My day is complete).

Xeluan