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Author Topic:   Can mutation and selection increase information?
bluegenes
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(1)
Message 1 of 222 (809221)
05-16-2017 8:27 AM


It seems to be a common creationist claim that evolutionary processes either cannot produce new "functional information," or that if they can, they cannot produce enough to account for the life forms we see in the world today. Yet I've never known any creationist show that either is actually the case.
So, I propose a thread on which creationists can support either or both of those claims, and on which evolutionists can support the opposing view that novel functions (presumably requiring "new functional information") can be added to the life system, and that the known evolutionary processes should be adequate to account for the evolution of any "information" present in modern life from one or several relatively simple ancestral forms.
Some may also want to argue that "biological information" is ill defined, undefined, or that there's no such thing etc., all of which is fine on this thread.
(Biological evolution forum, please)

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bluegenes
Member (Idle past 2477 days)
Posts: 3119
From: U.K.
Joined: 01-24-2007


Message 2 of 222 (809222)
05-17-2017 8:06 AM
Reply to: Message 1 by bluegenes
05-16-2017 8:27 AM


Bumpety Bump: Long overdue information thread!
Hi, Percy.
I think you agreed on the debunking selection thread that we need this: Message 219

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Message 3 of 222 (809224)
05-17-2017 9:07 AM


Thread Copied from Proposed New Topics Forum
Thread copied here from the Can mutation and selection increase information? thread in the Proposed New Topics forum.

  
RAZD
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Posts: 20714
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Message 4 of 222 (809228)
05-17-2017 9:40 AM
Reply to: Message 1 by bluegenes
05-16-2017 8:27 AM


functional information ... DNA function
It seems to be a common creationist claim that evolutionary processes either cannot produce new "functional information," or that if they can, they cannot produce enough to account for the life forms we see in the world today. Yet I've never known any creationist show that either is actually the case.
Some may also want to argue that "biological information" is ill defined, undefined, or that there's no such thing etc., all of which is fine on this thread.
Indeed, it seems mostly to be an argument from incredulity - at best: how can the human genome not have more "information" than the genome of a bacterium or a worm? Seems obvious, but the devil is in the details, and creationists typically are not strong on details.
On Irreducible Complexity, Information Loss and Barry Hall's experiments I show that functional information must increase or that it is irrelevant to any restriction on evolution. I expect this thread to do the same.
When we look at just DNA as a measure we see sometimes it increases and sometimes it decreases, but length is not a measure of what the DNA does.
So maybe a useful parameter would be DNA function. We can measure genes and we can find cross links between genes in doing certain functions. It's not just the number of genes then, but also how they interact.
So, I propose a thread on which creationists can support either or both of those claims, and on which evolutionists can support the opposing view that novel functions (presumably requiring "new functional information") can be added to the life system, and that the known evolutionary processes should be adequate to account for the evolution of any "information" present in modern life from one or several relatively simple ancestral forms.
I look forward to many examples of mutations adding new beneficial function.
Enjoy
Edited by RAZD, : st

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This message is a reply to:
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Taq
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(1)
Message 5 of 222 (809236)
05-17-2017 10:50 AM
Reply to: Message 1 by bluegenes
05-16-2017 8:27 AM


bluegenes writes:
It seems to be a common creationist claim that evolutionary processes either cannot produce new "functional information," or that if they can, they cannot produce enough to account for the life forms we see in the world today. Yet I've never known any creationist show that either is actually the case.
Additionally, I have yet to see a creationist demonstrate that evolution needs to produce "new genetic information" in order to produce all the species we see today from a universal common ancestor. In my experience, they define "new genetic information" so that the mechanisms of evolution can not produce it, but in the process their definition no longer has any bearing on actual biology.
To use an analogy, they insist that a baseball has to travel 1,000' in order to be a home run. All the while, no baseball player has ever hit a baseball 1,000', yet they have hundreds of home runs to their credit. Their definitions have no bearing on reality, and can therefore be ignored.

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Davidjay 
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Message 6 of 222 (809313)
05-17-2017 7:11 PM


The answer to this question is NO, no as in NO.
No recombination ever created a new species or organism or organ or system. NO beneficial mutation has ever taken place, so the evolutionists god of Slection never took place. This because beneficial mutations are a lie, a huge con !
Its totally bogus and false and a scientific lie fostered on the unknowing.
Misreads or cancers never help any species or individual. No extra leg ever helped anyone to walk better. The original design of the DESIGNER remains the ultimate, and no new models are evolving.
Mystery solved....
Nothing to see HERE folks.

Evolutyionists are used to forcing their theory on students and scientists. They are not used to answering any questions on this theory, because it is their religion. And as a religion it must be accepted by faith.... It is not science and it is not logical or rational and has no facts behind it. Evolution is a con and a LIE. A big one, but because it is forced on the gullible and on students, they must accept it. This their modus operandi...and so when faced with sane biological opposition, they can only be subjective rather than objective.

  
Faith 
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Message 7 of 222 (809339)
05-17-2017 8:54 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by bluegenes
05-16-2017 8:27 AM


No new information needed
It seems to be a common creationist claim that evolutionary processes either cannot produce new "functional information," or that if they can, they cannot produce enough to account for the life forms we see in the world today. Yet I've never known any creationist show that either is actually the case.
So, I propose a thread on which creationists can support either or both of those claims...
Well, I'd been assuming that new information WAS needed for all the diversity of life to exist, because that's often claimed, but now I don't think anything new is needed, it was all built in to the original genome of each Kind at Creation, most or all of it provided through genes for traits made up of two and only two forms or alleles. As I showed on the thread about YEC supposedly needing mutations and positive selection, a mere two genes with two alleles each provide sixteen different versions of a trait simply by combining the effects of the four different proteins produced by the four different alleles. Since many traits have quite a few more genes than two the possible variation in only one trait is enormous.
No mutations needed, no extra alleles needed, just the combining of the two-form genes through sexual recombination. (I'm only thinking of sexually reproducing creatures).
If there had been no Fall, meaning no death or any kind of disease in living things, this system would have worked just fine to produce all kinds of beautiful diversity in our world without any loss. We would probably have to have spread out to other planets to accommodate it all of course.
(As with evidence for the Flood, it turns out to be a lot simpler than we first expect -- Fossils n stratified sediments prove the Flood just fine, and genes in two forms are all it takes for all biological variation.)

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Coyote
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Posts: 6117
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Message 8 of 222 (809342)
05-17-2017 9:21 PM
Reply to: Message 7 by Faith
05-17-2017 8:54 PM


Re: No new information needed
s with evidence for the Flood, it turns out to be a lot simpler than we first expect -- Fossils n stratified sediments prove the Flood just fine...
Only if you hand-wave away all the dating, otherwise you are faced with the fact those "fossils [in] stratified sediments" are spread out over billions of years, not a single flood year.
Oh, and you have to hand-wave away the fact that those stratified sediments show the development, growth, evolution, and extinction of tens of thousands of separate species over those vast spans of time. Those events aren't going to occur in a single flood year.
So, to believe in the flood you have to ignore, rationialize, misrepresent, or deny a huge amount of real-world evidence. Fortunately, all it takes is a simple "wave of the hand" and it all goes away, eh?

Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.
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NosyNed
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Message 9 of 222 (809346)
05-17-2017 9:42 PM
Reply to: Message 7 by Faith
05-17-2017 8:54 PM


Re: No new information needed
No mutations needed, no extra alleles needed, just the combining of the two-form genes through sexual recombination. (I'm only thinking of sexually reproducing creatures).
But they are there. And you agreed that they are.

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Faith 
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From: Nevada, USA
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Message 10 of 222 (809351)
05-17-2017 10:25 PM
Reply to: Message 9 by NosyNed
05-17-2017 9:42 PM


Re: No new information needed
Yes I agree that there are lots and lots of mutations. Whether any of them are actually functioning alleles I doubt but if some are then I'd explain it as a fluke, since an allele is after all just a long sequence of chemicals that could occasionally be replicated by mistake.

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Faith 
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Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 11 of 222 (809352)
05-17-2017 10:37 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by bluegenes
05-16-2017 8:27 AM


Evolution uses up genetic diversity
My first answer is what I think was the plan at the Creation, but the question usually comes up in discussions of what evolution actually does -- that is, the process of evolving loses information, that's how you get new phenotypes. I prefer to describe it as losing alleles which I think is clearer than "information." And the example I use because it's so clear is domestic selection or breeding: to get a purebred animal requires losing all the genetic material, alleles, for other breeds. You select them out of the breeding pool, so you get the purebred on the basis of homozygosity at the loci that are the main traits of your breed, and that means eliminating all the other alleles.
Since genetic loss is how you get new breeds, it's also how you get variations in nature, usually by population splits in which a portion of the larger population becomes isolated and inbreeds over a number of generations. All the other alleles for other varieties or races remain in the greater population. But where active evolution is happening, in this isolated population, genetic diversity is of necessity being lost, so that after a number of such population reductions the species can run out of the genetic diversity needed to keep on changing.
But the ToE requires the ability to keep on changing. It's all about how a species can go on changing indefinitely eventually even becoming another species.
This is where the question comes in whether mutations could provide the necessary genetic diversity to keep on changing. My short answer is that if they could they would have saved the cheetah by now.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

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Dr Adequate
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Posts: 16113
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Message 12 of 222 (809359)
05-18-2017 12:09 AM
Reply to: Message 11 by Faith
05-17-2017 10:37 PM


Re: Evolution uses up genetic diversity
This is where the question comes in whether mutations could provide the necessary genetic diversity to keep on changing. My short answer is that if they could they would have saved the cheetah by now.
Well, that was weird.

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bluegenes
Member (Idle past 2477 days)
Posts: 3119
From: U.K.
Joined: 01-24-2007


(2)
Message 13 of 222 (809392)
05-18-2017 10:11 AM
Reply to: Message 4 by RAZD
05-17-2017 9:40 AM


Re: functional information ... DNA function
RAZD writes:
So maybe a useful parameter would be DNA function. We can measure genes and we can find cross links between genes in doing certain functions. It's not just the number of genes then, but also how they interact.
And genes duplicate.
I'm arguing on another thread that YECs should need to add mutation and positive selection of new "information" to their model, because there are many functioning alleles in modern populations that couldn't have been present in Adam and Eve (and in bottleneck Ark pairings of animals).
I'm trying to start a new breed of informationalist-creationist. It's fun!

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bluegenes
Member (Idle past 2477 days)
Posts: 3119
From: U.K.
Joined: 01-24-2007


Message 14 of 222 (809398)
05-18-2017 10:22 AM
Reply to: Message 5 by Taq
05-17-2017 10:50 AM


Looking at the past
Taq writes:
bluegenes writes:
It seems to be a common creationist claim that evolutionary processes either cannot produce new "functional information," or that if they can, they cannot produce enough to account for the life forms we see in the world today. Yet I've never known any creationist show that either is actually the case.
Additionally, I have yet to see a creationist demonstrate that evolution needs to produce "new genetic information" in order to produce all the species we see today from a universal common ancestor. In my experience, they define "new genetic information" so that the mechanisms of evolution can not produce it, but in the process their definition no longer has any bearing on actual biology.
I find that the goalposts generally get moved to avoid anything that can be directly observed, which always becomes a rearrangement of old information, rather than "true" novelty. This has a heavy reliance on pretending that we cannot observe past events from the present. But we can.
As you know, we can identify historic gene duplications, and detect duplicates which have new functions, and if that's not "new information", then evolution certainly doesn't need it!
Edited by bluegenes, : typo

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Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 15 of 222 (809406)
05-18-2017 11:02 AM
Reply to: Message 13 by bluegenes
05-18-2017 10:11 AM


Re: functional information ... DNA function
And genes duplicate.
Would you please explain to me how genes duplicate? Since they occupy a position along the DNA strand, and they are thousands of codons long, and the replication process follows the strand codon by codon how does a copy of a gene get separately inserted into the strand?
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

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