 My goal here on YouTube is not debate and it never has been though. I am often dragged into debates My goal is outreach. I want to reach out to the people who are really interested in the topics of science rationality logic and skepticism I want to try to correct at least a tiny fraction of the misinformation that spreads on the internet things like AIDS denialism Creationism anti-vaxxers alt-med hocus-pocus and fat diet advocacy Nephilim free isn't worth debating. I wouldn't seek out a debate with him He's not the kind of person I'm here to interact with because let's face it He's a hopeless case when it comes to logic and science The only benefit that can come from interaction with Nephilim free is to let him serve as an example of how irrational and illogical Some creationists can be I think that task has been accomplished so many times There's not much need for me to add anything However, Nephi called into the Magic Sandwich show and he made some specific factual claims The history between Aaron Don and Neph meant that the three of them occupied what time was left for discussion And I missed my chance to address the specific claims, so I'll correct that here Let's just run through his points in no particular order False statement one Natural processes cannot create new information only minds can create codes There are three problems with this statement a what the heck is information? How do you define it? There are classical definitions, but they don't apply to the vague way. He's using them as a simple example The organism with the most DNA per cell is the amoeba Corn has far more genes than humans Some organisms have very specialized organs very acute hearing or ability to adapt to extreme conditions That rivals human capability Which organism has the most information? There are some metrics for information like Shannon or Kolmogorov, but they applied a very specific criteria not global genetic content Specified complex information a term invented by William Dempsky is not scientifically testable or relevant in real science B Instead of the meaningless term genetic information, let's use the term genetic complexity Which will define as the number of novel functions encoded in the genome genetic complexity can and is increased by natural processes Primarily through the duplication of existing DNA sequences either whole chromosomes called aneuploidy whole genomes called Polyploidy or short segments, which includes any number of known and observed genetic phenomenon like non-reciprocal crossovers and translocations Two identical gene sequences have the same basic complexity as a single gene sequence However, with the very first functional modification We suddenly have an increase in genetic complexity the organism now has a new gene with a new function and therefore a new phenotype Does this actually happen in biology all the time? We see this particularly in gene families a series of genes that are say 90% or more identical in sequence But with different functions For a specific example take the hemoglobin that makes your blood red There are at least 12 distinctive types of hemoglobin in humans and they're controlled by a series of closely related genes Some are only expressed in the fetus others are hereditary and only certain populations of people When we study hemoglobin in mice we find that mice that live in prairies express a form of hemoglobin That is different from their mountain cousins who are under selection for a higher affinity for oxygen These are biochemical adaptations that directly result from the duplication and divergence of the globin gene family So a simple gene duplication or change in number of chromosomes Followed by natural changes in DNA sequence create additional genetic complexity See all codes are the result of mind. He says That's true, but he's begging the question on several levels All known codes except for DNA are in fact codes created by human minds It seems unlikely that DNA was the result of a human mind therefore. It is the exception We don't have any examples of non-human codes other than DNA It would be inappropriate to say that since DNA is not a human code It must therefore be a code created supernaturally by an all-powerful invisible being. I Can't say that because all swans I've ever seen have been white Therefore any animal which looks like swans, but are not white must therefore not be swans There are in fact black swans But they are the exception to the all swans are white conclusion. We arrive at by inductive logic Likewise all codes are human codes the product of human minds However DNA is the exception to that inductive conclusion There is no reason for us to discount exceptions to inductive conclusions Except a closed mind or massive headphones that filter out logic. I Will concede that there is no reason to prefer a natural origin of DNA to a supernatural one on a strictly logical basis Given the track record of conflict between religious and scientific explanations throughout history though I will tend to prefer the natural origin to the supernatural one. I am talking to Nephilim free though Who believes the earth is 6,000 years old? False statement to Bacteria are exposed to the Sun. Why don't we see bacteria change in morphology? We do Simply put morphological changes occur all the time The problem here is simply Nephi's lack of understanding of the topic For one bacteria exhibit a wide variety of morphologies Some are spheres some are rods some are corkscrews some change shape and response to their environment or their bacterial neighbors What I imagine he's getting at is that we never see a bacteria evolving legs or arms or creepy eyeballs and headphones While they're sitting under the microscope slide There's a simple reason for that. There's no advantage to a bacteria to have any of those things What would it do with an arm that would make it better at passing on its genes? I find the lack of appreciation of bacteria sad when you stop and think about it you the person watching this video contain more bacteria than human cells In your gut on your skin in your hair and under your fingernails are whole communities bacteria There are bacteria that live miles below the earth's crust bacteria that thrive in nuclear reactors on toxic waste at the bottom of the deepest ocean trench in the very Hottest and the very coldest environments. We can conceive We may have visited the moon But our bacteria are likely still there waiting and dreaming in the little voids of the artifacts we left behind They may be our first colonists beyond this world and they are by far the most successful organisms so far evolved To complain that they haven't evolved into something we recognize as advanced is to ignore the world that they dominate They came before us and they will be here after we are long gone But let's address the other aspect of the question Where do all the different body plans come from in this world? Why does starfish look so different from sponges that look different from whales and giraffes and spiders in the long-nosed monkey? Why all the diversity of forms in The simplest possible terms the answer is Development and especially the expression of a class of genes called homeotic genes or Hawks H.O.X. Genes for short What do Hawks genes do? They turn on groups of other genes in response to external signals They are the master switches that get flipped in development to make a cluster of cells become an arm bud or an eyeball or a liver We understand this process quite well Although there will always be the edge of our knowledge where some of the details remain to be filled in as a simple example Imagine we look at why we are bilaterally symmetrical our right and left sides generally match Why is that? Well, it's something we inherited from our first bilaterian ancestor a Gene called DPP which stands for decapentiplegic is Responsible for establishing a gradient of chemical that radiates from the center to the two poles of the early embryonic cell cluster following the formation of similar anterior and posterior gradients if you turn this gene off in some bilaterians You get an animal with only half the number of limbs If we activated in animals that are not bilaterians, they begin to grow left and right halves Likewise, we know the Hawks genes responsible for arm formation for eye development and heart and liver development Ever wonder why insects all have six legs while spiders have eight? The two species have different sequences for Hawks genes called Bitcoin sin and fushi terrazu or FTZ We could swap the pathways out and make six-legged spiders or eight-legged insects Either chance or selection drive the emergence of new phenotypes new body plans to use the technical word bowel plans Hawks genes play a key role. Where do they come from? Well, they came from an ancestral Hawks gene by mechanisms of gene duplication and divergence as we've already discussed Those animals most distantly related to humans like sponges and Hydra do not have Hawks genes But they do have a distantly related group of transcription factor genes When we lay out the phylogenetic tree for the genes responsible for limb formation for example It shows a distinctive pattern of inheritance that correlates with what we know from the fossil record and modern biogeographical distributions The conservation of the DNA sequence that Hawks genes have in common the homeo domain is very widely conserved So much so that a worm Hawks sequence can be transplanted to a fly or a mouse and Still be functional to make a mouse ear or a fly wing So the reason an organism would possess an arm or a leg is because it acquired a type of specialized gene and Selection made sure that the new gene was maintained False statement three. There is no consensus on what a species is This is completely wrong and either Nephilim is ignorant or he's aware of how wrong he is and is being intentionally deceptive a.k.a. lying It's absolutely true that there are multiple ways to define a species, but none of them are arbitrary They rely on objective measures of things like genetic divergence intergroup fertility and the occurrence of linkage disequilibriums For vertebrates, it would be inappropriate to use anything other than biological reproductive isolation For bacteria DNA differences are most often used for viruses the differences relate to life cycles and cell tropisms None of that really matters for the purposes of evolution Modern biologists rely very heavily on molecular phylogeny instead of divisions of taxonomy We know the full genomes of thousands of organisms and they line up very consistently in a distinctive pattern That suggests common ancestry of all living things Nothing yet has shaken biology to its very core The most interesting thing to happen is a discovery that there are always minor exceptions to every rule that is proposed False statement four Scientists are just discovering that junk DNA is all functional The last point I want to address is the topic of junk DNA and non-coding sequences or meta information as Nephilim called it I've made entire videos on this topic, but it's a stubborn myth and hard to squish In the 1972 paper that coined the term Susumu Ono proposed several uses for non-coding sequences You can stop by my video and listen to the original text as well as my analysis The term junk DNA is not a scientific phrase We say non-coding DNA or regulatory sequence or structural DNA We have names for the different kinds of non-gene sequences that Nephi is lumping into one category a Large percentage of DNA. However plays a primarily structural role in eukaryotes For example the telomeres and the centromeres of a chromosome Consist of millions of repeats of a short motif of sequence Other regions within the chromosome consist of similarly repetitive sequences Up to 10% of your genome are the littered remains of failed retroviruses Those sequences are the very raw material for new gene formation. They provide buffering for recombination between genes They provide some flexibility in how genes are expressed Research in this area was because of our curiosity about what these sequences did We know from natural selection that inert sequences tend not to be conserved over time or between distant cousins So why were they there? When we look at DNA we can identify those regions that are most essential for the health of the cell Because they're the regions less likely to drift over time The study of non-coding regions is made possible by and motivated by our knowledge of modern evolutionary theory This is in direct opposition to what some creationists insist is the case If I hear Nephi mention epigenetics one more time, I may snap Epigenetics are all the things about DNA other than its sequence For example, DNA is bound by proteins parts of it are methylated or acetylated Some parts of it are more tightly coiled than others Each of these plays a role in modifying the traditional genetics that focuses on the sequence of the DNA However, it's still ultimately genetics and only refined what we already know In fact as with non-coding sequences It was the minor departures from evolutionary predictions that helped us discover these special conditions By his own admission Nephilim free is not a biologist and he is not a biochemist He has five thousand subscribers. So presumably they like to hear him spout this nonsense. I Don't find him very interesting He does typify the kind of experts that have emerged on the internet though He like all of us has access to a wealth of information He could through research and study on the internet gain a wealth of knowledge about fields of science But he's missing the discipline of understanding how knowledge is obtained He's never been a scientist never used the scientific method in a serious academic setting He's approaching the topic from the same mindset. He approaches religion And what he's seeking isn't a deeper understanding But validation for his dogma Through that mental filter. He views the work of others without that sense of humility That makes us leave our preconceptions at the door This is the tragedy of the internet expert Access to millions of scientific papers But lacking that most fundamental characteristic of a good scientist a commitment to honest inquiry Thanks for watching