Any arguments against the creationists' argument that genetic info. can't increase?

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swordoftheword

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One very impressive argument that creationists have made is that biological evolution cannot be possible extend beyond the extent of variation within a specie*; that is, a new specie cannot be formed by evolutionary processes*, but they can alter in order to adapt.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Before i really post the argument, it is very important that i clarify a few misconceptions, explain a few concepts, etc, etc:

1) There are two definitions of the word "evolution":
A) (The more scientific definition) 'change over time', adaptation, variation, etc.;

B) What some refer to as "molecules-to-man" evolution, that is, the idea that the entire modern biological diversity derived from a common ancestor through a long, complex series of ancestors that derived from one another through evolutionary processes.
It is gravely important to make a distinction between these two definitions of evolution (especially in this thread). Please refer to definition A as "variation evolution" and definition B as "molecules-to-man evolution" or "mtm evolution) every time you write the word "evolution" in this thread so that readers can know to which definition you are referring. This very important!


2) There are two types of science:
A) Operational science - that which can be observed, tested by the scientific method, and proven true/false;

B) Historical science - science that deals with the far past. This kind of science deals with things like the origin of the universe, earth, life, species, etc. This kind of science is not observable, is not always testable, and cannot be proven true/false.
Operational science is much easier to be called "fact" than historical science because it can be observed, tested and proven true/false.

It is also extremely important to distinguish from these kinds of science as well. Please always be very careful to take note of to which type of science you are referring.

3) The term "baramin" is a term of biological classification (separate from the standard classification system used by most scientist). it means:
the original organisms (and their descendants) created supernaturally by God as described in Genesis 1; these organisms reproduce only their own kind within the limits of preprogrammed information, but with great variation. Note: Since the original creation, organisms of one kind cannot interbreed with a different kind, but individuals within a kind may have lost the ability (information) to interbreed due to the effects of the Curse.
http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/nab/glossary

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Now, here's my proposition:

Natural selection and even some speciation are natural functions of nature that are shown to be true by operational science and have been observed in nature. these concepts are also Biblically sound.

When God created plants an animals, he created baramin (remember, "created kinds") which were the original creatures holding a set amount of genetic information. Over time, variating combinations of the genes came about through the offspring of the original baramin. Natural selection selected certain combinations of genes that were favorable the unfavorable combinations of genes were deselected and, in some instances lost. Eventually, the variations became so great that one variation of a baramin could not successfully breed with another variation. for example, God probably created something like a wolf as a dog-baramin, but not a poodle. Though the poodle & wolf are in the same baramin, they cannot successfully breed because the veriation is so great.

Moreover, genetic information can be lost over time. However, a baramin could never breed with another baramin because they are different kinds (eg. a lion could never naturally breed with a bear).

Evolutionists propose all species derived from other former species through evolution. Creationists and evolutionists divide divide at this point:

Creationists say that the baramin were created with the maximum amount of genetic information that will ever exist and that information had been distributed, reorganized and even lost as species adapted and natural selection took it's effect on them. Today, the varying forms of baramin are the result of the processes in the previous sentence.

Conversely, evolutionists (while still accepting the concept of distributed, reorganized and lost genetic information over time, believe that the species arose from mtm evolution.

The problem is that mtm evolution would require an INCREASE of genetic information as the first supposed life form (a kind of amoeba) was far too simplistic to be responsible the the modern biodiversity alone - it did not have all of the genes necessary for the modern biodiversity!

Evolutionists propose that new information was provided by mutations, but mutations have never been observed to cause in increase of genetic information. they have been known to cause neutral
changes, to delete information, insert information, and reorganize the information in DNA sequences, but never to INCREASE information.
The argument could be made that an insertion of genes into a DNA sequence is an increase of information, but in this instant, the inserted information was pre-existing; the original amoeba-like organism wouldn't have had this opportunity.

So then where did the needed increase of information come from? This question has remained unanswered by evolutionists, for the most part, and I have yet to be impressed by the few responses I have seen.

Hence, operational science shows how the creation model (veriation evolution) makes much more sense whereas the evolutionary (mtm evolution) model has great problems with this.

Does anyone have a good argument against this?

Please try to keep everything backed up by credible sources - no I'm not saying that you have to cite what you say, but be try to make sure that your research is credible. I am looking for Biblical and scientific reasons to agree or disagree with the above argument.

Let me know if this sounds confusing, I tried my best to keep it as straight forward as i could, but I may have not been the most successful at that.

And for what it's worth, I am a 6-24 hour day, young-Earth creationist who believes in the full authority of the Bible and a literal interpretation of Genesis 1-3.

*
This statement is not entirely true: new species have been OBSERVED (by operational science) to arise from other species but this is only in the circumstances that the genetic information from the original baramin ('created kinds') was been lost - still no new genetic information was added. The baramin have evolved (with variant evolution) to the point that new species have arisen.
It would have been more accurate for me to say, "... variation within a baramin; that is, a new baramin cannot be formed by evolutionary processes ... ." the reason i worded this statement this way was because it would have been very confusing using the term "baramin" right away when most of the readers are not familiar with it.

(Shew, my fingers are tired)
 

Deamiter

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The problem with this entire argument is that it does not define "genetic information."

Once you've defined genetic information, then we can look at some mutations and we would need to be able to quantitatively determine whether a particular mutation is an increase or decrease in genetic information.

Note -- I'm not trying to just dismiss the entire argument. I would LOVE to point to a particular mutation and show that it is an "increase in genetic information." As there is no scientific standard or unit for "genetic information" and creationists haven't bothered to define the term in this argument, I can't imagine where to start. Do you want ME to provide an example so we can argue about whether it is an increase in genetic information without first defining genetic information? Wouldn't that be pointless?
 
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sfs

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1) There are two definitions of the word "evolution":
A) (The more scientific definition) 'change over time', adaptation, variation, etc.;

B) What some refer to as "molecules-to-man" evolution, that is, the idea that the entire modern biological diversity derived from a common ancestor through a long, complex series of ancestors that derived from one another through evolutionary processes.
It is gravely important to make a distinction between these two definitions of evolution (especially in this thread). Please refer to definition A as "variation evolution" and definition B as "molecules-to-man evolution" or "mtm evolution) every time you write the word "evolution" in this thread so that readers can know to which definition you are referring. This very important!
If you wish to be understood, it's helpful for you to use standard terminology. Your (A) above is, if I understand what you're trying to say, just "evolution". (B) is "common descent".


2) There are two types of science:
A) Operational science - that which can be observed, tested by the scientific method, and proven true/false;

B) Historical science - science that deals with the far past. This kind of science deals with things like the origin of the universe, earth, life, species, etc. This kind of science is not observable, is not always testable, and cannot be proven true/false.
Operational science is much easier to be called "fact" than historical science because it can be observed, tested and proven true/false.

It is also extremely important to distinguish from these kinds of science as well. Please always be very careful to take note of to which type of science you are referring.
This terminology is purely creationist, and is apt to confuse scientists. There is experimental science and there is observational science; the former is usually easier. Within observational science, it doesn't matter whether the events occurred in the distant past or nanoseconds ago, as far as the reliability of the conclusions. Evolutionary biology is both an observational and an experimental science, but is more heavily weighted toward observation than, say, particle physics.

As for your proposal here, I'll agree with Deamiter and ask you to provide a working definition of "information". How can it be measured?

By any standard definition of "information", the process of gene duplication followed by further mutations to one of the gene copies increases the information in the genome. Whereas there were originally N genes, there are now N+1, all different, all coding for different proteins. That process, repeated many times, seems adequate to provide arbitrarily large increases in complexity. What else is required?
 
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random_guy

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Okay, you have someone with Down syndrome, the result of an extra chromosome. Do they have more or less genetic information than someone without the extra chromosome? Why? You have someone with Turner's syndrome, missing a chromosome. Do they have more or less genetic information that someone with the chromosome? Why?

If you can't answer these questions, it's because genetic information is meaningless because you don't have a definition for it. Thus the argument against the Creationist point is easy, until the Creationist define genetic info, it's pointless.
 
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mythbuster

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Information can be defined and there is branch of mathematics called information theory. Google information theory and you will see.

Not only that but information can be measured, can increase, and decrease.

Protein sequences have an informational content. The more complex the sequence the more information is required to code for the sequence and the lower probability of a spontaneous appearance.

The OP is valid and should not be dismissed.
 
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notto

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The more complex the sequence the more information is required to code for the sequence and the lower probability of a spontaneous appearance.

The OP is valid and should not be dismissed.

How do we measure the complexity of the sequence?

What units do we use for complexity and information?

Can you demonstrate this measurement with some actual genetic data.

Please show your math.

Again, you are just playing with definitions.

Unless you can define information or complexity with some units and show math, you are basically making an emotional appeal with words that sound sciency and mathy.
 
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Deamiter

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Information can be defined and there is branch of mathematics called information theory. Google information theory and you will see.

Not only that but information can be measured, can increase, and decrease.

Protein sequences have an informational content. The more complex the sequence the more information is required to code for the sequence and the lower probability of a spontaneous appearance.

The OP is valid and should not be dismissed.
Of course, the information theory to which you refer was built around computer code where each message can only be written with a single sequence of 1s and 0s. Further, much of information theory assumes that the purpose of transmission is to transmit the data perfectly with no changes.

In contrast, there are many different ways to code any particular protein so a change in the sequence does not necessarily translate into a change in the expression of that sequence. Further, it is a serious advantage to a population to have variation in its genome so that it can adapt to changing environments so the assumption that ANY change in the DNA sequence is a loss of information doesn't make sense in terms of genetics.

Perhaps even more interestingly, if you google "genetic information" not a single hit defines the term in a way that could be used to define how much information is held in a particular string of DNA. This is key because if you want to compare the amount of information in one sequence to another (to show, for example, that we lose information but never gain information with mutations) you MUST have a definition that can give you a number.

Do feel free to prove me wrong -- find a definition and show why it applies to DNA. I contend that such a definition does not exist but if you can find a single scientist or even a creationist that has a quantitative definition applying to genetic information, we can move on to looking at actual genetic sequences to see what happens to the information content with different mutations.
 
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elcapitan

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Information can be defined and there is branch of mathematics called information theory. Google information theory and you will see.

Not only that but information can be measured, can increase, and decrease.

Protein sequences have an informational content. The more complex the sequence the more information is required to code for the sequence and the lower probability of a spontaneous appearance.

The OP is valid and should not be dismissed.

What makes the proteins more complex? Their size and shape? The number and/or variety of amino acids they are composed of? Please clarify.

And then, how does the greater complexity of a protein ensure that it has superior function?

Also, as has been pointed out, you need to define "genetic information".

If "genetic information" is just the nucleotides (which is what you seem to be saying in the above quote), then you've already been proven wrong.
 
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sfs

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Information can be defined and there is branch of mathematics called information theory. Google information theory and you will see.

Not only that but information can be measured, can increase, and decrease.
There are two common definitions of information, one in classical information theory (Shannon information) and one in algorithmic information theory (Kolmogorov information, or complexity). Which do you think the original post was using?

Protein sequences have an informational content.
Protein sequences can be described as having an information content, using a particular definition of information, if there is some practical reason for doing so. So far no one has proposed a definition of information here, or any practical reason for using it.

The more complex the sequence the more information is required to code for the sequence and the lower probability of a spontaneous appearance.
What definition of information, and of complexity, are you using here? Please be specific. It sounds a little like Kolmogorov complexity, but do you really want to make that choice? Kolmogorov complexity is uncomputable for any string. It also has nothing to do with the probability of spontaneous appearance. The probability of a string of symbols appearing from a source is related to Shannon information, but that has nothing to do with complexity.

The OP is valid and should not be dismissed.
The OP was vague hand-waving and should be challenged until the argument has some real content.
 
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gluadys

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One very impressive argument that creationists have made is that biological evolution cannot be possible extend beyond the extent of variation within a specie*; that is, a new specie cannot be formed by evolutionary processes*, but they can alter in order to adapt.

Sorry to begin by being picky, but the singular of "species" is "species" not "specie".

The statement is incorrect on two counts. A species can adapt beyond the extent of variation in the species, because mutations are a constant source of new variation.

And species can be formed by evolutionary processes. This has been observed both in nature and in laboratory conditions.

The only way in which creationists typically get around this is by using a non-standard definition of "species".



~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Before i really post the argument, it is very important that i clarify a few misconceptions, explain a few concepts, etc, etc:

1) There are two definitions of the word "evolution":
A) (The more scientific definition) 'change over time', adaptation, variation, etc.;

B) What some refer to as "molecules-to-man" evolution, that is, the idea that the entire modern biological diversity derived from a common ancestor through a long, complex series of ancestors that derived from one another through evolutionary processes.
It is gravely important to make a distinction between these two definitions of evolution (especially in this thread). Please refer to definition A as "variation evolution" and definition B as "molecules-to-man evolution" or "mtm evolution) every time you write the word "evolution" in this thread so that readers can know to which definition you are referring. This very important!

Michael Ruse, refers to these as the process of evolution and the pathways of evolution. The first deals with how evolution occurs at any time. The second with the specific pathways evolution has taken in the past.

B) Historical science - science that deals with the far past. This kind of science deals with things like the origin of the universe, earth, life, species, etc. This kind of science is not observable, is not always testable, and cannot be proven true/false.

The conclusion is incorrect. Although history cannot be directly observed, it is often testable and can be falsified.

[/INDENT]Operational science is much easier to be called "fact" than historical science because it can be observed, tested and proven true/false.

Insofar as observed and tested facts entail a single logical conclusion, we can reach factual conclusions about history.

3) The term "baramin" is a term of biological classification (separate from the standard classification system used by most scientist). it means:
the original organisms (and their descendants) created supernaturally by God as described in Genesis 1; these organisms reproduce only their own kind within the limits of preprogrammed information, but with great variation.​


An interesting question I have not yet seen creationists deal with is how much variability can be preprogrammed into a baramin, given that this is heavily dependent both on the original size of the population and on maintaining a minimum population (usually in the thousands if not millions) during the whole history of the baramin since creation.

I have laid out the parameters of this problem in these two posts (sorry for the repetition).

http://www.christianforums.com/t5536798-variation-and-variability.html
http://www.christianforums.com/t5892304-common-misconceptions-2-process.html

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Now, here's my proposition:

Natural selection and even some speciation are natural functions of nature that are shown to be true by operational science and have been observed in nature. these concepts are also Biblically sound.


So, as predicted, you don't really hold that speciation does not occur, but opt for a non-standard definition of "kind" or "baramin".

Now since evolution only predicts the formation of new species, why should it be required to show the formation of new kinds or baramins?

New species are all that is necessary to explain the pathways of evolution. We do not need an evolutionary process of generating new kinds or baramins. Common descent only requires speciation--which you agree IS produced by evolutionary process.

When God created plants an animals, he created baramin (remember, "created kinds") which were the original creatures holding a set amount of genetic information.

Other posters have already spoken on the need to quantify genetic information in order to make any meaningful statement in this regard.
 
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elcapitan

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2) There are two types of science:
A) Operational science - that which can be observed, tested by the scientific method, and proven true/false;

B) Historical science - science that deals with the far past. This kind of science deals with things like the origin of the universe, earth, life, species, etc. This kind of science is not observable, is not always testable, and cannot be proven true/false.
Operational science is much easier to be called "fact" than historical science because it can be observed, tested and proven true/false.

It is also extremely important to distinguish from these kinds of science as well. Please always be very careful to take note of to which type of science you are referring.
There is no such distinction. Evidence is evidence. Both of your arbitrary categories rely on physical evidence to reach their conclusions.

Of course, you've convieniently drawn the line so that only the "unfalsifiable" science contradicts what you believe.

The problem is that mtm evolution would require an INCREASE of genetic information as the first supposed life form (a kind of amoeba) was far too simplistic to be responsible the the modern biodiversity alone - it did not have all of the genes necessary for the modern biodiversity!
Actually, the first life form was probably a bacterium; amoebas are much more complex. This doesn't dispove your argument but I think you need to realize that you're going to have to be specific in this thread if you want to be taken seriously. (some of us know what we're talking about.)

The argument could be made that an insertion of genes into a DNA sequence is an increase of information, but in this instant, the inserted information was pre-existing; the original amoeba-like organism wouldn't have had this opportunity.

So if a single nucleotide was copied and inserted into a genome, you would say that it's not new information because that nucleotide was pre-existing? By your argument, no genome can have more information than another, since all genomes are composed of the "pre-existing" A,C,G, and T.



So then where did the needed increase of information come from? This question has remained unanswered by evolutionists, for the most part, and I have yet to be impressed by the few responses I have seen.
You can't disprove something that isn't defined. Once again, if the nucleotides themselves are "genetic information", then you've been disproven already.



Also, the fact that you aren't impressed isn't proof; specifically it's the fallacy of argument from personal incredulity.
 
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mythbuster

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“Perhaps even more interestingly, if you google "genetic information" not a single hit defines the term in a way that could be used to define how much information is held in a particular string of DNA. This is key because if you want to compare the amount of information in one sequence to another (to show, for example, that we lose information but never gain information with mutations) you MUST have a definition that can give you a number.

Do feel free to prove me wrong -- find a definition and show why it applies to DNA. I contend that such a definition does not exist but if you can find a single scientist or even a creationist that has a quantitative definition applying to genetic information, we can move on to looking at actual genetic sequences to see what happens to the information content with different mutations.”


Dreamiter, I did not have to look very far to find the following site:

http://www.funpecrp.com.br/GMR/year2005/vol3-4/wob06_full_text.htm

The Abstract below is from that site where they measure the quantity of information in DNA. Do we agree that this is true?

ABSTRACT. The necessary information to reproduce and keep an organism is codified in acid nucleic molecules. Deepening the knowledge about how the information is stored in these bio-sequences can lead to more efficient methods of comparing genomic sequences. In the present study, we analyzed the quantity of information contained in a DNA sequence that can be useful to identify sequences homologous to it. To reach it, we used signal processing techniques, specially spectral analysis and information theory.
 
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elcapitan

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http://www.funpecrp.com.br/GMR/year2005/vol3-4/wob06_full_text.htm

The Abstract below is from that site where they measure the quantity of information in DNA. Do we agree that this is true?

ABSTRACT. The necessary information to reproduce and keep an organism is codified in acid nucleic molecules. Deepening the knowledge about how the information is stored in these bio-sequences can lead to more efficient methods of comparing genomic sequences. In the present study, we analyzed the quantity of information contained in a DNA sequence that can be useful to identify sequences homologous to it. To reach it, we used signal processing techniques, specially spectral analysis and information theory.

Did you bother reading the article?
It's funny, because you cited an article that supports common ancestry and the increase of genetic information.

The search for homologous substrings in a DNA or protein database is arguably the most important problem for bio-informatics (Meidanis and Setubal, 1997). It is a necessary step in the reconstruction of large genomes from the raw data generated by DNA sequencing equipment, and it is the main tool for identifying the function and evolutionary history of genes....Note that two moderately long homologous DNA sequences are always descendants from a common ancestor.
According to the article, the "information" is coding sequences. The whole point of the article was that their methods singled out homologous DNA sequences. Please note that the homologous blocks are only part of the "information" (i.e coding sequence).

In other words, they used their methods to estimate the genetic information that had not been added on by mutations.

We have described a method for estimating the amount of information contained in a DNA sequence that can be used to identify homologous blocks, in spite of mutations and acquisition errors
If evolution didn't create new genetic information, this article would have been unnecessary and pointless.

P.S. Please note that this article is only concerned with the amount of homologous genetic information, and not the total genetic information, contained within a sequence.
 
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gluadys

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Did you bother reading the article?
It's funny, because you cited an article that supports common ancestry and the increase of genetic information.

Indeed the article plainly states:

Note that two moderately long homologous DNA sequences are always descendants from a common ancestor.

What is not homologous has been changed (possibly added) since the populations diverged from each other.
 
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KerrMetric

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Evolutionists propose that new information was provided by mutations, but mutations have never been observed to cause in increase of genetic information. they have been known to cause neutral changes, to delete information, insert information, and reorganize the information in DNA sequences, but never to INCREASE information.
The argument could be made that an insertion of genes into a DNA sequence is an increase of information, but in this instant, the inserted information was pre-existing; the original amoeba-like organism wouldn't have had this opportunity.

So then where did the needed increase of information come from? This question has remained unanswered by evolutionists, for the most part, and I have yet to be impressed by the few responses I have seen.

Here - answer this - no other creationist on here bothers to try.

http://foru.ms/t5695772-mutations-are-always-bad-or-are-they-a-simple-thought-experiment.html

Whatever a mutation can do it can obviously do the reverse. Even if you don't mathematically define information as Creationists seem scared to do, the above thought experiment shows that if a mutation decreases information the same mutation in reverse obviously increases it.


2) There are two types of science:
A) Operational science - that which can be observed, tested by the scientific method, and proven true/false;​


B) Historical science - science that deals with the far past. This kind of science deals with things like the origin of the universe, earth, life, species, etc. This kind of science is not observable, is not always testable, and cannot be proven true/false.​
Operational science is much easier to be called "fact" than historical science because it can be observed, tested and proven true/false.

It is also extremely important to distinguish from these kinds of science as well. Please always be very careful to take note of to which type of science you are referring.




There are NOT two types of science. This is typical move the goalposts nonsense from Creationist claptrap sources.
 
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Deamiter

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DREAMITER


Dreamiter, I did not have to look very far to find the following site:

http://www.funpecrp.com.br/GMR/year2005/vol3-4/wob06_full_text.htm

The Abstract below is from that site where they measure the quantity of information in DNA. Do we agree that this is true?

ABSTRACT. The necessary information to reproduce and keep an organism is codified in acid nucleic molecules. Deepening the knowledge about how the information is stored in these bio-sequences can lead to more efficient methods of comparing genomic sequences. In the present study, we analyzed the quantity of information contained in a DNA sequence that can be useful to identify sequences homologous to it. To reach it, we used signal processing techniques, specially spectral analysis and information theory.
Sorry, I do indeed disagree that this can measure the quantity of information in a string of DNA because the method that's not the definition of "information" the article uses.

From the article:
We have described a method for estimating the amount of information contained in a DNA sequence that can be used to identify homologous blocks, in spite of mutations and acquisition errors. This parameter (the mutual information content) allows us to estimate the probability of false positives - strings that are not homologous to the given sequence, but are just as similar to it as the homologous ones.
In other words, they have calculated mutual information content not individual information content. The article describes a way to compare the DNA of two different organisms to see how similar they are in a very ingenious way. The method cannot tell how much information a single string has, nor can it determine if one string has more information than another. The method is only designed to measure "mutual information content" or the amount of similarity between the strings.

In short, this article provides no way to compare the amount of information contained by two different strings because information is defined as the number of DNA sequences SHARED by the two strings.
 
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Deamiter

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Perhaps another interesting feature of this argument is that it claims that there was once a "perfect" string of DNA that had a maximum of "information." Any definition of "genetic information" capable of comparing the amount of information in one string of DNA to another should similarly be able to determine the perfect string with a maximum amount of information.

According to the theory of evolution, such a perfect string should be impossible to find because any string of DNA can be produced from another with a simple series of mutations. I'd expect, however, that along with the claim that the effects of mutations are severely limited and cannot lead to new species/genus/whatever the creationists should have evidence of such a limit that would allow them to at least determine a series of potentially perfect DNA sequences based on current genomes.
 
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mythbuster

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“How do we measure the complexity of the sequence?”
Complexity can be measured in BITS. A simple measure would be the length of the sequence. A longer sequence would be more complex, assuming the code does not have some sort of repeat command. Information is conveyed using symbols or an alphabet. The more symbols the more information can be conveyed with each symbol. DNA has four symbols, and each symbol is worth 2 bits. A two symbol sequence is worth 4 bits and so on. (Log 4 = 2, in base 2)
Giant molecules (DNA itself) are more complex than a single protein.

“What units do we use for complexity and information?”
We can use BITS but the more technical definition is a decrease in uncertainty.

“Can you demonstrate this measurement with some actual genetic data.”
Sure. They say the human genome has 3 billion base pairs, so if each is worth 2 bits then we have the capability of storing 6 billion bits.

There is a table at http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/291/5507/1177


________________________________________
SEQUENCED ORGANISMS
Organism Genome size Completion
date Estimated no.
of genes
H. influenzae 1.8 MB 1995 1,740
S. cerevisiae 12.1 Mb 1996 6,034
C. elegans 97 Mb 1998 19,099
A. thaliana 100 Mb 2000 25,000
D. melanogaster 180 Mb 2000 13,061
M. musculus 3000 Mb - unknown
H. sapiens 3000 Mb - 35,000-45,000

And the table shows there is a difference in information that can be measurred.

I am NOT saying that we descend for influenza but rather if common descent is true than there has been an increase in information.
 
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