selfology

I was browsing through some of the articles on answersforgenesis website. In two seperate articles the author claims that evolution is not possible because (as he claims) evolution requires the addition of "new information".

In this article he argues with the editor of another editorial that he is wrong because he is confusing natural selection with evolution. Which I find to be absurd.
<a href="http://http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs2002/0405response.asp" target="_blank">letter to editor</a>

He does something similar in this article, where he discounts the biologists claim of mimicing evolution in the lab, as a misunderstanding of evolution on the scientists part.

<a href="http://http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs2002/0408lab_evolution.asp" target="_blank">biologists mimic evolution in lab</a>

Am I missing something? what is "new information" and how can one accept natural selection but not evolution? Are the two even mutually exclusive?

I have a laymens knowledge at best so please don't laugh if my questions seem trivial.

ex-robot

Basically, they believe natural selection and mutation act on existing information but don't add anything that would be required to get "fish-to-gish", molecules-to-man, and various other sayings according to them. That doesn't tell you what "new" information is, but who can tell you that?

Your second question is simple. Yes, if you are referring to evolution as Darwin saw it and most lay people see it, which is common descent of all life essentially. For someone who just sees evolution as change over time, allele frequencies, etc., then no.

Just my 2 cents.

xr

selfology

Yes, one can accept evolution without natural selection, but, how can you accept natural selection without accepting evolution? I think that was a better dodge move than even barry sanders could have pulled off.

Valentine Pontifex

The creationists confuse thing on this issue a lot. For example read

<a href="http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/postmonth/feb01.html" target="_blank">http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/postmonth/feb01.html</a>

Also think of this little sequence:

1) There exists gene A.

2) A type of mutation call a duplication creates a second identical copy of A. We will call it B.

3) Random mutation can cause B to change how it works. (And with A around the organism will not die for the lack of A!) B can thus be selected for slightly different (and sometimes greatly different) function

By the way most layman use the word "information" this is added information. And there is a great deal of evidence that this happens. There are many families of genes constructed in a manner that suggests that this did happen.

HRG

Easy. A mutation which results in a DNA sequence which did not exist yet in the gene pool of a population is new information.

regards,
HRG.

pseudobug

Nice example Lord Valentine.

If I may, I would like to both simplify your explanation even further and, perhaps, in a latter post, expand the explanation with experimental examples which further illustrate the concept you bring up.

Proteins often consist of parts called domains that perform or actuate certain tasks in cells. To anthropomorphize this a bit, let's consider a protein of three parts that directs a specific cat protein to do something and represent that protein by a simple sentence with each word being a domain of the protein:

Eat the mice.

Each of the letters in the above sentence is encoded by three nucleotides of a single codon in a gene.

Now, let's duplicate the protein/sentence:

Original protein: Eat the mice.
Duplicate protein: Eat the mice.

Now, let us assign the letter "m" in mice the codon CAT and the letter "r" the nucleotide codon TAT.

Over time, one cat's duplicate gene has a single, random point mutation changing the "CAT" codon to "TAT". We now have two proteins/sentences:

Eat the mice.
Eat the rice.

This is new information which has been introduced into the cat's biochemical makeup via gene duplication and random mutation.

Put the rice eating cat in an environment which contains rice and mice and have him compete against cats able to eat only mice. Introduce an epidemic which wipes out the mouse population in our rice-eating cat's habitat.

The rice-eating cat survives as natural selection has made the rice-eating cat and his descendents more fit and able to reproduce at a higher rate than mice-eating cats. Mice-eating only cats die in droves and become extinct.

The rice-eating cat becomes vermin just like the lying, "no new information", disinformation-spreading creationists.