Where is the evidence for evolution?

I'm coming to this debate late. This is a reply to the first message.First, a disclaimer. I seem to have lost my patience with some Creationist positions. I don't know where it went. I used to have it, now I don't. If someone finds it please let me know. This seems an incredibly uninformed question.No evolutionist ever comes in here and asks, "Where is this book that speaks of creation and Jesus?" You can believe that the evidence for evolution has been misinterpreted, and you can, like most people, be unaware of the less obvious evidence for evolution, but to ask "Where is it?"And to start threads asking questions and then never reply?Many people waste valuable time composing informed responses to uninformed questions like yours that the author never responds to. I hope you'll have the courtesy to reply at some point.--Percy

The February, 2003, issue of Scientific American includes the article Evolving Inventions which describes experiments in genetic programming (software modeled upon evolution) illustrating that random change combined with selection can produce quality designs, in some cases superior to those produced by people. Just as with evolution, there's no designer. Random change with selection is a natural process that can produce amazing results.--Percy

I'm still curious about why you think Dr. Caporale's book supports your view. She said her book demonstrates that NRM fits into a Darwinian framework, the opposite of what you believe.--Percy

Well, yes, it is a fact that we've observed descent with modification through natural selection. Since we can observe this happening without any discernable intervention by a designer we presume that in the past it also proceeded without a designer. In science it is evidence that counts, not opinions. It is your opinion that living structures have the appearance of design, but do you have any evidence of a designer at work?--Percy

Mutation has the ability to add new information. Some common mutational mechanisms that produce new information are base substitutions, gene duplication, gene insertion, transposons, chromosome duplication, and a host of other copying errors. Even mutations that simply replace one nucleotide with another are examples of new information, because the new nucleotide sequence represents a new allele not previously present in the population (an allele is a type of a specific gene, such as the gene for eye color, one allele for blue, another for brown, etc)Here's a simple example of the process of creating new information by substituting a single nucleotide. Let's consider a single gene, call it the X gene, in a population. This gene has only two alleles, call them A and B, and let's say these are the nucleotide sequences for the two alleles: During reproduction let's say a mutation occurs in one nucleotide of allele B, thereby producing new allele C, so now the population's gene pool has increased in size by one allele (note that C differs from B in only a single nucleotide): Does the new allele produce a difference in the organism's phenotype (phenotype means all characteristics of an organism, including morphological, chemical, psychological, etc)? Perhaps. And if it does, will it increase or decrease the organisms likelihood to survive to reproduce? That's what natural selection will decide.Mutation is the source of new information, and natural selection is the pruning mechanism that decides which mutations pass on to the next generation.--Percy

The sun is a "source" of light, and sometimes my car "decides" to break down? Are they intelligent, too?You asserted that evolution couldn't create new information, and I provided an explanation and an example of how random mutation does what you said it couldn't do. Do you have a reply?--Percy

Base substitution is the simplest and most basic form of mutation. It is so common that you could cite practically any act of reproduction as an example. Try this search at Google: Some of the hits look apropos, such as this paper relating how a single base substitution caused a change in chromatin structure in yeast: Mutations create new information, and natural selection controls which mutations are successful. There is no limit to the number of mutations a genome can experience, and hence no limit to the degree of change and amount of new information that can accumulate.--Percy

So, what about this quote? I have no idea why Dr. Macreadie would make statements inconsistent with universally available evidence. You have enought information to figure this out for yourself. For example, he's certainly incorrect when he says a defective gene is loss of information, as the example of the base substitution error I provided illustrates. The new allele may be beneficial or, more likely, detrimental, but it *is* new information, something you were claiming couldn't happen.--Percy

Well put. It seems incredible, but there's a breed of Creationist who believes it is okay to provide false or misleading information. Sadly, the argument by quote is a bit of longstanding hucksterism that Creationists, for reasons known only to themselves, like to engage in. Alarm bells should go off in your head anytime you see a prominent evolutionist quoted as denying evolution.Piltdown man is a known fraud. Among those familiar with the issue, everyone has his own favorite villain, but I agree with this article that it was Charles Dawson, an amateur archeologist/paleontologist suspected of other frauds involving Roman artifacts. It is guessed that the scientist he duped into revealing the finds (I've forgotten his name) eventually came to suspect the fraud, for he soon stopped making the fossils available for inspection, and within a year of their discovery he no longer mentioned them in his own published papers, but the fraud was widely suspected in professional circles . Upon his death the Piltdown bones were made available for study and the suspected fraud was quickly confirmed.Nebraska man is another known fraud, but it never fooled any scientists. While it received a lot of attention in the popular press, perhaps because it was the only human antecedent ever found in the Western Hemisphere, scientists were skeptical and it had no scientific impact.Java Man and Peking Man are accepted by scientists as possible human ancestors.Lucy is the most complete Australopithicus afarensis skeleton yet found. I've never heard the story about the knee bone, but it is true that the Lucy skeleton was recovered over two seasons, 1974-1975. But if we assume it's true, what would it mean? At worst, that Lucy is a composite of multiple Australopithecines fossils that happened to be almost identical in size. While it may call into question the reconstruction, it doesn't lead to any doubt about the essential findings, primarily the age of the Australopithicus afarensis fossils, their similarities to Homo sapiens, and their early bipedalism.--Percy

If you look up "science" in your dictionary you'll see that it has multiple definitions. When defining mathematics, your dictionary is using a different definition of science than the one that applies to physics, chemistry and biology. For mathematics, they're using this definition of science: For sciences like biology, physics, astronomy and so forth you want this definition: To clarify a bit more, sciences like physics, astronomy and biology possess the qualities of replicability and tentativity. Mathematics does not possess this latter quality.--Percy

If you think through the examples and the explanations that have been provided to you, you'll see that Gitt is wrong. The simplest example of creation of new information is any simple copying error in a gene during reproduction. If the new gene is unique then it represents a new allele not previously present in the population, ie, new information. Where the population previously had n alleles for that gene it now has n+1. The longer explanation is in Message 64.Before you imbue Gitt's views with any credibility you should first answer for yourself how Gitt could be right when almost any reproductive copying error can add information.--Percy

This looks like a bunch of disconnected assertions. I think that if you respond to the example in Message 64 that your objections might become more clear to me. It should have been clear from the context, but in case not, I was referring to the creation of a new sequence of base pairs in the gene which if unique would be a new allele. If a population had n alleles in the gene before, it now has n+1, which would represent new information. n is the number of unique alleles for the gene in the population. n+1 is the number after one of the alleles experiences a mutation yielding a unique base sequence not previously available.--Percy

Base substitution during reproduction is "utter speculation"? It is *the* most basic type of mutation, and even your own GUToB with its NRM accepts base substitution. You must have misunderstood something in Message 64, for it postulates nothing more complicated than that. I'll explain again.Let's say that after reproduction the offspring finds it has a single base substitution in one of its genes. The new base sequence is different from any of the existing alleles for that gene in the organism's population. Since the population had n alleles for that gene before, it now has one additional, yielding a new total of n+1 alleles. This is more information than existed in the population's gene pool before.Like you, Sonnikke also asked for an example, and I suggested that he try this search at Google: As I commented at the time, some of the hits are examples of base substitutions resulting in new phenotypes, such as this one: --Percy

Uh, I did. In the very email you replied to. Which was already a repeat of an earlier post. For the third time, you can try this search at Google: Some of the hits are examples of base substitutions resulting in new phenotypes, such as this one about yeast: On a more fundamental level, what's to prevent a single base substitution resulting in a new phenotype? DNA is merely the encoding for protein production. Some base substitution mutations will produce the same protein, some will produce a modified protein that does essentially the same thing as the original, and some will produce a protein that changes the phenotype.But to return to the original point, whether or not a base substitution results in a new phenotype, if it occurs in a gene and is not identical to an existing allele, then it's a new allele and has increased the number of alleles for the gene by one, ie, new information. It's new information even if it isn't expressed in the phenotype. Another base substitution to the new allele will not necessarily yield the same result as the same base substitution to the other alleles.--Percy

This is where the argument from authority fallacy often leads, to brawls about credentials. This fallacious debate tactic is often effective because it diverts attention from the original topic. Rather than saying Gitt is correct because he's a "leading information scientist", you should instead argue that he's correct because his research is sound. Is his research sound? The only place Gitt gets a hearing is in non-scientific and religious circles, so I guess not.But why is that the case? Is the scientific community biased against positions that are scientifically valid but have religious overtones? Or is there something fundamentally wrong with Gitt's assertion that evolution cannot create new information?The latter is the case, of course. Gitt can argue information theory all he likes, but the simple fact of the matter is that the very process he claims information theory deems impossible has been observed to occur. Gitt asserts that evolution cannot produce new information, and yet not only does the genetic evidence argue otherwise, not only do the simple mechanics of genetic reproduction argue otherwise, but the actual process itself has been observed and documented.In other words, as long as Gitt makes theoretical arguments against an observed and established process, nobody in the scientific community is going to bother giving his views much attention.--Percy