"no new information"

Why is there a claim of no new information in DNA when there is evidence for viral transfection and bacterial uptake of plasmids?

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Jesus said, "If a blind person leads a blind person, both of them will fall into a hole." Thomas 34

"On blind faith they place reliance, what they need more of is science"- MC Hawking

Because they they can't tell a plasmid from a plasma from a plaza.

gah? Bah? what do you mean and who can't?

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Jesus said, "If a blind person leads a blind person, both of them will fall into a hole." Thomas 34

"On blind faith they place reliance, what they need more of is science"- MC Hawking

he means them.

the problem is that anti-evolution people don't know what information is. it has probably been drowned out by all the noise from creationists.

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MSci MSc ARCS DIC PhD..... yes, I am bragging.

I meant the claim that there is not new genetic information being added to the genome. Considering the thread of ERV's and viral transfection, does it not mean that new info is added to the genome. Plus the plasmid uptake. more new information (at least for that organism)

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Jesus said, "If a blind person leads a blind person, both of them will fall into a hole." Thomas 34

"On blind faith they place reliance, what they need more of is science"- MC Hawking

To begin with, it is possible to measure information in different ways depending on what one wants to treat information as.

Consider a random sequence 1001101011101011
and an ordered sequence 1111111111111111

If we are interested in compression of data, then the first sequence is far less compressible than the second, so it takes more information to represent it in its most compressed form.

Alternatively we might be dealing with noise and information. The second sequence is more ordered, so is unlikely to contain noise. Noise, being random, lacks information. So in this case there is more information in the latter.

What creationists seem to do is cherry pick from various (contradictory) ideas of information and bolt on nonsensical ideas (duplication doesn't increase information for example). They then use this mishmash to claim that mutation cannot lead to new information. I have even encountered one person argue that the DNA of the people and animals that came of the Ark was more pure (contained more information apparently) and that the "microevolution" of the Ark-Dog into all of todays canines resulted in a decrease in information (the Ark-Dog contained all the information to give rise to today's canines, but a modern dog can only give rise to another modern dog).

In short the "no new information" claim is just another collection of lies and misunderstandings on the part of creationists.

G.

On the creationist side?

Probably a few reasons...

They do not bother keeping up and/or ignore newer scientific finds. Look at the "moon dust" argument that still gets used sometimes, Nasa found the mistake in calculations in the late 60's yet AiG only got around to it in the early 90's and some groups still have not admited that the original figures were in error.

Some creationists are afraid that id evolution did occur then that proves the Bible a lie, even though there are many T/E's that would dissagree. They do not seem to be afraid to lie about the facts if it supports their position.

Haven't the YEC's shifted to some type of "no NET gain" position? Not sure what they mean by "net" though.

What is the "moon dust" argument?

That there is not enough dust on the moon for it to be old, it started back in the 60's when a number cruncher at Nasa miscalculated the dust influx based on some bad data in the preperations to put man on the moon. The mistake was quickly found and corrected at Nasa, but creationist groups latched onto the idea and it wasn't until the early 90's that an article ran in a creationist magazine that they finaly came to the same conclusion that Nasa did almost 30 years prior, the original calculations were bad. Aig and a few other less radical creationist groups have stopped using the argument, but many still do.