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

[Mallon]

OT I agree creationist's have trouble in defining "genetic information" just like evolutionist have trouble defining "the fittest" without going back to that which survives.

http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CA/CA500.html

 

[shernren]

Wow, information not needed. Sounds like someone is trying to pull a rabbit out of an empty hat. New features just pop into existence sounds like hocus pocus to me.

OT I agree creationist's have trouble in defining "genetic information" just like evolutionist have trouble defining "the fittest" without going back to that which survives.

Actually, fitness involves reproductive success, not survival. Cute try though ...

 

[Impaler]

Wow, information not needed. Sounds like someone is trying to pull a rabbit out of an empty hat. New features just pop into existence sounds like hocus pocus to me.

Well if you don't define information how do you know it's needed? We've seen mutations produce new sequences, and we've seen mutations increase the size of the genome. Seeing how that's all that's needed to account for the difference between any two organisms on the planet then I'd say information isn't needed. However, creationists still insist it is, so that's why I want them to answer my question on the information in a bacterium and human genome.

 

[Smidlee]

Actually, fitness involves reproductive success, not survival. Cute try though ...

I remember reading a very long interesting debate in another forum years ago debating this and in the end all results end up that which survives including reproductive success. What determines reproductive success is also based on that which survives.

 

[sfs]

Wow, information not needed. Sounds like someone is trying to pull a rabbit out of an empty hat. New features just pop into existence sounds like hocus pocus to me.

Your sarcasm is misplaced. "Information" is just a label in this discussion, a label for the mysterious something that (some) creationists claim cannot be created by mutation but which is needed for new features to evolve. We're just trying to get them to tell us what it is, something they seem quite unable to do. Until they do, there's really nothing to discuss.

OT I agree creationist's have trouble in defining "genetic information" just like evolutionist have trouble defining "the fittest" without going back to that which survives.

Scientists have perfectly good working definitions for fitness, and have no trouble measuring it under controlled conditions. The problem with "information" is that there is no working definition and no way of measuring it under any conditions.

 

[sfs]

I remember reading a very long interesting debate in another forum years ago debating this and in the end all results end up that which survives including reproductive success. What determines reproductive success is also based on that which survives.

Genetically based traits that increase reproductive success are more fit. The differences don't have to involve survival (dying is only one way to reproductive failure), and there's nothing circular in the definition of fitness. If an animal with genetic variant A is more likely to have offspring than one with alternative variant B, than it is more fit.

What's (partially) redundant is the expression "survival of the fittest". The fittest are by definition more likely to survive (more properly, to reproduce), so stating that they're more likely to survive doesn't provide any new information. It's like saying "Heavy things weight more than light things." It's true but uninteresting. That doesn't change the fact that some objects really are heavier than others, just as some individuals really are more likely to survive than others as a result of their genes. Both are facts, and both have consequences.

 

[Smidlee]

Genetically based traits that increase reproductive success are more fit. The differences don't have to involve survival (dying is only one way to reproductive failure), and there's nothing circular in the definition of fitness. If an animal with genetic variant A is more likely to have offspring than one with alternative variant B, than it is more fit.

And that which is to determine which has these traits that increase reproductive success are fit are the based on the one who survives.
Natural selection for the most part is like a tag saying "made in America" after a finish product.
Not that anyone would deny natural selection yet just slapping NS tag on living things is just too simple (which would fit well during Darwin's day when they saw a cell as something very simple) to what we know today.

 

[Smidlee]

Your sarcasm is misplaced. "Information" is just a label in this discussion, a label for the mysterious something that (some) creationists claim cannot be created by mutation but which is needed for new features to evolve.

Not only creationists have noted this but evolutionist as well. For example the book "The Plausibility of Life—Resolving Darwin’s Dilemma"
They came up with the "facilitated variation" idea which in the end sounds the same as Darwinism.

 

[shernren]

I remember reading a very long interesting debate in another forum years ago debating this and in the end all results end up that which survives including reproductive success. What determines reproductive success is also based on that which survives.

Ahh, but you have disemboweled your own argument.

There are various shades of truth in logic. There are tautologies - statements that are trivially true; truisms - statements that are obviously true with respect to observation of the natural world; facts - statements which can be shown to be true of the natural world, and have been shown so; and then mere statements which could be shown to be true but haven't yet been.

Your argument attempts to prove that since "survival of the fittest" (whatever that means) or evolutionary statements are trivially true, they are not true at all. Trivially true statements fall into two categories: tautologies and truisms.

Now, a tautology is a statement which is true based on the merits of its logic alone. For example, the sentence "It will rain today or it will not rain today" is true, whatever the weather is today; "If evolution is true, I will eat my hat, or I will not eat my hat" is true whether or not, indeed, I even have a hat (and however you choose to parse the badly-worded sentence). Now, is natural selection itself tautological? (Because a tautological statement can be true without having any meaning or relationship to the natural world - "plugh works or plugh doesn't work" is true whatever plugh is and however it is supposed to work.) Apparently not. If "survival of the fittest" simply meant "that which is fittest, survives", then maybe. In any case, you admit that there is more to it than survival. Why? Because you admit that reproductive success still has something to do with it.

For if you had said "Reproductive success has nothing to do with what is fittest; only survival" with reason and evidence then you could have tried harder to make your case. But you didn't. You validated survival by saying that it was a part of reproductive success. Therefore you now have to deal with the more accurate statement: "those which reproduce most successfully, determine more of the genetic makeup of the next generation." This is by no means a tautology, since it could definitely be falsified; as an extreme example, if the next generation's genetic makeup did not depend at all on their parents' makeup then the statement would be obviously false.

So it is not a tautology. Is it a truism? Truisms are those statements which are patently true from observation; "the sun rises in the east and sets in the west", "most people have two arms and two legs", "leaves are green", "stone is much stronger than wood" for example. You might say instead that "those which reproduce most successfully, determine more of the genetic makeup of the next generation" is a truism. Is it? I would not be surprised if it is. For after all, truisms are true! If I curse the sun's rising position and setting position for being a truism, that does not cause the sun to rise from the north tomorrow; just because I think it is patently obvious that people have two arms does not make it any less true than it is. Similarly, if you were saying that "those which reproduce most successfully, determine more of the genetic makeup of the next generation." is a truism, that would in fact only amount to you admitting that it is true after all.

So your argument falls apart.

 

[Deamiter]

well, the argument doesn't really fall apart unless (and I may be mistaken) Smidlee is claiming that because those that are more fit reproduce more, evolution is false.

It seems to me that he's complaining about our inability to predict, based on genetics alone, the fitness of an individual. Because we do not understand the function of every single bit of genetic code, we cannot simply look at two strings of DNA and say which is fitter without first observing the organisms with the DNA to see which organisms reproduce more in their environments.

To Smidlee -- the difference between our need to observe live organisms to determine their fitness and the whole information thing is that only creationists claim that there is some undefined property of DNA (information content) that cannot be increased through mutations. It's true, one might make a qualitative argument that humans are more complex than bacteria, and base the claim on our observation of number of interconnected systems or number of different types of cells or whatever.

The key difference is that these creationists are moving from the qualitative statement that we're more complex to the strong argument that information (or complexity) cannot increase in DNA. They've skipped the step of defining information in a way that can be quantified (not just subjectively guessed at). In contrast, nobody has ever claimed that our definition of fitness depends on some unknown property of DNA so it's unnecessary to fully understand the function of DNA in order to use the definition of fitness.

In short, while fitness depends on genes, the definition of fitness does not depend on an understanding of genetic code. In contrast, complexity (or information content) also depends on genes, but the claim that information cannot increase depends directly on an understanding of genetics that we don't have. Until and unless genetic information is defined, the argument that it cannot increase will still be nothing more than an empty statement.

 

[sfs]

And that which is to determine which has these traits that increase reproductive success are fit are the based on the one who survives.
Natural selection for the most part is like a tag saying "made in America" after a finish product.

Deamiter has already responded, but I will add a little. I think I understand what you're saying, but I don't see what the problem is. Fitness is just the ability to pass on genes, so if you want to measure fitness, what you have to do is measure the ability to pass on genes, i.e. observe the reproductive success of a particular class within your population. Biologists who want to compare the fitness of two traits, or better two genetic variants, compare how well the two do in generating offspring. What else should they do to study fitness?

The situation is the same in physics. The decay rate of an unstable nucleus is a measure of how fast it decays. So to measure it, you have to observe the atoms of a particular type decaying. Do you complain because physicists stick the label "unstable" on U-237 nuclei after watching them decay, or for declaring that one isotope decays faster than another after observing them? If you don't, why complain that biologists stick the label "fit" on a particular genetic variant after observing that it produces greater reproductive success than another variant?

In both decay and selection, it would be possible to make predictions about the results from first principles if we had a complete, tractable theory of the underlying process; in the absence of a complete theory all we can do is observe what happens. Measuring things is what scientists do, after all, so it's not an unusual activity. (The main difference between the two cases is that nuclei are vastly simpler things than organisms interacting with their environment, so a first-principles prediction is not out of the question.)

Not that anyone would deny natural selection yet just slapping NS tag on living things is just too simple (which would fit well during Darwin's day when they saw a cell as something very simple) to what we know today.

The complexity of cells has little to do with it. We shouldn't slap a "selected" label on traits because it is hard to determine for certain whether a trait has actually been selected for or not. In the case of a complex trait we can guess that it wouldn't have arisen by genetic drift, so we can assume selection was involved, but that is not the same as observing the selection. Actually detecting selection in the wild is difficult except in extreme cases; it is usually done not by counting offspring, but by finding the genetic traces left behind after selection has operated. That's why we can say, for example, that European adults can digest milk as a result of natural selection operating a few thousand years ago.

 

[birdan]

Just to add a minor point:
"fit" (reproductive success) is also relative to the environment the organism is in. Bacteria A can be more "fit" than bacteria B in sea water, but the reverse might be true if they were in hot, highly alkaline water from a thermal pool.

 

[BigDug]

Scientists have perfectly good working definitions for fitness, and have no trouble measuring it under controlled conditions. The problem with "information" is that there is no working definition and no way of measuring it under any conditions.

This is confusing to me. Everywhere in nature we observe biological order, and biological order is in fact cited as a characteristic of living things in most books, so why wouldn't "information" be considered a form of biological order in the DNA?

It seems ridiculous that science does not have any working definitions, nor any reference points by which to compare dna sequences.

But you have a simple definition of "information" in my opinion. You have the dna chain to create all the little machines that run the human body in good working order. All these little protein "blueprints" in the dna are certainly "information", when one is mutated it most likely will cause the "blueprint" not to be read correctly and therefore produce a little machine that doesnt work and will be most likely useless.

I think its a good working definition of "information".

Now when creationist' talk about mutations having no power to create "new information" they are talking about the fact that when you have one of these non-functional machines all of a sudden produce a beneficial effect because what they once were functioning as has proved to be somehow harmful to the organism..then that "beneficial" mutation cannot be considered an "addition" of information because it rather represents a breakdown or a corruption....Like if a car alarm ceased to work, that would indeed be "beneficial" in my opinion because I am annoyed by them in general,...but the change still results in no new information, only a "beneficial breakdown".

and no way of measuring it under any conditions.

Why would you need to measure a functional change?it is qualitative not quantitative.

If you insist of a quantitative measurement itself, why not take the analogy further? If I have a small book which shows how to build a airplane model, when I copy the book it has a few copying errors. So those errors could be counted. There is your quantity.

Somebody in this thread had noted the fact that there doesnt exist any scientific definitions of "new information", well of course not, there has never been any new information put in a genome, hence it is easy to see why there arent any mentions of it anywhere. How does this provide evidence against creation?

 

[sfs]

This is confusing to me. Everywhere in nature we observe biological order, and biological order is in fact cited as a characteristic of living things in most books, so why wouldn't "information" be considered a form of biological order in the DNA?

Okay, so consider biological order to be information. Great. Now what? What have we gained scientifically?

It seems ridiculous that science does not have any working definitions, nor any reference points by which to compare dna sequences.

It seems ridiculous because it is ridiculous -- and wrong. Science has perfectly good definitions of information, and many methods for comparing DNA sequences. Some of the methods even use the concept of information. But none of these definitions and none of these methods have the properties that creationists ascribe to this thing they call "information". Since they are the ones advancing the argument about information and evolution, it's their responsibility to explain what the heck they're talking about. To me it sounds like they're just making stuff up to sound scientific.

But you have a simple definition of "information" in my opinion. You have the dna chain to create all the little machines that run the human body in good working order. All these little protein "blueprints" in the dna are certainly "information", when one is mutated it most likely will cause the "blueprint" not to be read correctly and therefore produce a little machine that doesnt work and will be most likely useless.

That's a vague description, not a definition. If a gene duplicates, is there more information there or not? What if a gene duplicates and then mutates so the two copies are producing different proteins. Is that more information? What if simply having multiple copies of a gene is beneficial for the organism. Is that more information? What if a gene undergoes a mutation to a new form, and then mutates back again. Which version has more information?

Now when creationist' talk about mutations having no power to create "new information" they are talking about the fact that when you have one of these non-functional machines all of a sudden produce a beneficial effect because what they once were functioning as has proved to be somehow harmful to the organism..then that "beneficial" mutation cannot be considered an "addition" of information because it rather represents a breakdown or a corruption....Like if a car alarm ceased to work, that would indeed be "beneficial" in my opinion because I am annoyed by them in general,...but the change still results in no new information, only a "beneficial breakdown".

So what about the mutations are not a breakdown in any sense, that provide a function that didn't exist before, like the ability to digest nylon, or the ability to degrade an antibiotic? Those would be the creation of new information by your definition, right?

Why would you need to measure a functional change?it is qualitative not quantitative.

Look at the title of the thread: it's about whether genetic information can increase. An increase is a quantitative change. If you can't measure information, how can you tell whether it has increased or not?

If you insist of a quantitative measurement itself, why not take the analogy further? If I have a small book which shows how to build a airplane model, when I copy the book it has a few copying errors. So those errors could be counted. There is your quantity.

By that definition (fidelity to some original copy), any difference from the original is a loss of information, regardless of function. So mutation can insert thousands of new genes, all kinds of new functions can evolve, and the information will still have decreased, because the new genome is different from the old. That doesn't do much to support the original argument, which said that information has to increase for new functions to evolve.

Somebody in this thread had noted the fact that there doesnt exist any scientific definitions of "new information", well of course not, there has never been any new information put in a genome,

By your first definition of information (those little blueprints, remember), information gets added to genomes all the time. More blueprints equals more information, doesn't it? So what are you talking about here? By your second definition, of course no new information has been added, since new information by definition doesn't exist.

hence it is easy to see why there arent any mentions of it anywhere. How does this provide evidence against creation?

Go back and look at what this thread is about. It isn't an attempt to provide evidence against creationism; it's about a creationist argument against evolution. At this point the argument is still vaporware.

 

[birdan]

Look at the title of the thread: it's about whether genetic information can increase. An increase is a quantitative change. If you can't measure information, how can you tell whether it has increased or not?

At this point in the argument, where we've established that change has to be measurable, I usually ask what the unit of measurement is. And that's usually where the thread goes silent. Just once I wish I would get a concrete answer like base pairs, or protein coding genes, or something. But I think they know that any concrete unit of measurement will lead to a very concrete refutation of their argument. Hence, keep the definitions hazy.