What's Wrong With the Creationist Argument from Information Theory

Another answer to an evolution sceptic. This time the argument from Information Theory was raised. This is why once again maths is being misapplied by creationists.

For anyone who is interested, there are many papers published in peer reviewed journals describing the gene duplications I mentioned in this video. No, I did not just make up the examples, they are not hunches. There is considerable scientific evidence for them.

Like this one on "The Evolution of Trichromatic Color Vision by Opsin Gene Duplication in New World and Old World Primates" : http://genome.cshlp.org/content/9/7/629.full

And Ken Miller, a well known evolutionary biologist (and a church going Christian, for what its worth) wrote a detailed article on the evolution of complex blood clotting in vertebrates via gene duplication:
http://www.millerandlevine.com/km/evol/DI/clot/Clotting.html

The music is Puccini's O Mio Babbino Caro, from Joshua Bell's album "Romance of the Violin".

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Creationism
• Intelligent
• Darwin
• Darwinism
• Design
• ID
• Michael
• Behe
• Evolution
• of
• Colour
• Vision
• Blood
• Clotting
• Gene
• Duplication
• Information
• Theory
• Complexity
• Mutations
• Genome
• Religion
• Science
• Fundamentalism
• maths
• abuse

[MumblingMickey]

Why would anyone be bothered to counteract such a silly argument to begin with? Information is 'observed' being added to entire populations of organisms over time.

So forget about needing to explain it...the argument 'complexity does not arise from simplicity' is contradicted by observation.... without a requirement for any explanation.

Essentially the response to anyone stupid enough to offer this as an argument really should be 'Okay, fine, now explain why the opposite is observed?'

[TravisMorien]

@MumblingMickey The argument is commonly used by creationists who are smart enough to know better than "evolution contradicts the laws of thermodynamics" but not well educated in science to understand what evolution actually is. It is used by some of the more "sophisticated" creationist blogs and apologists.

Remember, there are still a lot of creationists who maintain that there are no transitional fossils, so it's hard to overstate the level of ignorance out there.

[alanbriv]

Dear evolutionist, just keep telling yourself that it just looks like design. Keep telling yourself that the complexity of universe(from the atom to galaxies) was caused by nothing and continues to be caused by nothing. You know that a STARTER exist. You know that chance is just a word and therefore can not be the cause. YOUR GIG IS UP! Evolution will go down as JUST another modern myth.

[TravisMorien]

@alanbriv Your post reeks of a certain amount of desperation. Being unable to provide evidence or even some kind of cogent logical argument you're just projecting your own beliefs onto others and claiming that their disagreement must be based on denial.

If you are serious about actually converting people, you're going to have to do a lot better. Good luck!

[labrat1807]

@alanbriv Dear creationist windbag. The first thing to understand about evolutionary theories, whether they be regarding cosmic, stellar, chemical, biological or cultural evolution, is that none of them address the origins of the universe. You can accept any type of evolutionary theory and still believe in a creator god. Maybe not the one you believe in, but that's your problem and not the problem of evolutionists. Yours sincerely, an evolutionist.

[dancingnancy09]

@TravisMorien I couldnt agree more that the misguided fool called alanbrivs post utterly reeks of desperation-thats very well said-I think the words 'your gig is up"(someone should tell him its spelled jig as in the dance) and things going down in history as myths is desperate in that he is well aware that it is the case for what he wants to beleive- creationism and religion in general-I'd feel sorry for moron if he wern't so offensive, ignorant and pathetic

[MumblingMickey]

@TravisMorien Have you not noticed creationists becoming less numerous over time online generally... and certainly shrinking on youtube?

Now there are a few reasons I think for this... (its not that they all now understand what sorts of idiots they were)

The most obvious one is they are simply warned away from using modern social media and the internet generally....

Which suits me fine... let them lock themselves away from communications technology... that would be just dandy.

[MumblingMickey]

@a01011399

"Genomes are not getting more complex today,..." I know you were told they don't...but the idiots that told you that aren't geneticists.

So for example the Gene size of maize. It increased from 4.9 pg for hybrid Seneca 60 to 5.5 pg? That's a genome increase of over 12% observed in only a few generations.

Source: Annals of Botany 82 (Supplement A): 37-44, 1998

So it is indeed possible, and observed that genome sizes do increase, decrease and stay the same size.

Discuss this!

[MumblingMickey]

@a01011399 Surely your understanding of evolution is not tied solely to one particular anonymous person providing you personally with evidence?

Is it not possible for you to go off on your own, investigate these things, and come to a personal conclusion based on the available evidence?

You don't need anyone to provide you with evidence, you can provide that for yourself.

I think your problem is that you don't want to! My guess is you'll avoid anything that demonstrates where you are wrong.

[MumblingMickey]

@a01011399 "you ave to prove that organisms are getting more complex as time passes"

Fine just look that up... start with the following research ... Richard Lenski LTE experiment... where you can read all about new base pairs... both larger and smaller genome sizes and additions to traits and deletion of traits depending on the environment... or just look at the average race horse and compare it to a Zebra!

Seriously at the very least make a point that can't be simply shown to be incorrect.

[MumblingMickey]

@labrat1807 So if you were to measure the speed at which new information entered the 'general' population from say 1600 to 1800 that would probably equate with the modern period 1990 to 2010...

Which means 25 year old creationists will eventually be 60 yrs old in a world where their own grandchildren have 100 times their general knowledge base!

I'd find it pretty amazing if those grandchildren understood nucleosynthesis and were still biblical literalists!

[MumblingMickey]

@labrat1807 Well from what I know of the history of such notions there is indeed a 'half life' in that the ideas are directly attached to the level of knowledge available at any one time to a population.

In the 1700's that wasn't a lot. There was a lot of information, but it wasn't available to the general population. They got all their news from the pulpit.

However that's no longer the case. The pulpit now has to compete with a plethora of information sources, not least the internet.

[labrat1807]

@MumblingMickey I did not know about the claim that flight was impossible. Very instructive. Yeah, there's a definite trend to the religious psychopathology, and it seems to transcend centuries. I wonder if it has a half life, or will actually become extinct at some point...........here's waiting.

[MumblingMickey]

@TravisMorien In fact the funniest part of all this is that they could wipe out all the nonsensical shit in one fail swoop and still square off evolution with genesis... but its too late to do that now...they have a rake of nonsense that would all be wiped out.

In fact all they have to do is go with the God made all animals and they started to evolve... but rather than do that they create a total nonsensical pile of garbage where pulling a few strings unravels the whole thing.