What is an ID proponent's basis of comparison? (edited)

But this is complete rubbish. Not only is the "research" (and I use the term loosely) of that amusing charlatan Werner Gitt not founded in the work of Shannon, but his very definition of information is incompatible with that of Shannon. Not only is his "research" not founded in that of Shannon, they aren't even talking about the same thing when they say "information".

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Apparently not since you don't seem to be making any sense. I talk about billions of generations of bacteria and you convert that into billions of years. How else are we to understand this unless you think bacteria have generation times close to a year, as opposed to the 20 minutes something like E.coli actually has.

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I thought you were talking about billions of years in Earth's history.

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Did it? the amino acid changed, how do you know that this lead to a loss of information since there is no change in function to tie it to? Aren't you the one propounding Abel and Trevors idea of 'functional information'? If this mutation doesn't change the gyrase's function why should it be a loss of information?

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Becasue it lost it's structure. And the more this happens, the gyrase will eventually be useless.

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You are making a nonsense of the whole CSI argument. There is no deterioration of its structure, you can show absolutely no change in the functionality of the gyrase. It makes no sense to say,'yes but if I change all of the amino acids the protein will cease to function' as that says nothing to what this particular amino acid change does.

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I didn't even mention CSI. I was talking about structure. You do not have to lose ALL the functionality to lose information. You can lose some part of the structure and you lose some of the information.Look, look at the word -> INFORMATION.Do you see it? Now remove the first 2 letters. And what do you get?You get the word -> FORMATION.Now lose the last 5 letters. And what do you get?You get the word -> FORM.Taht's right, information, in the physical world is represented by a structure, a form of some kind. If you lose a bit of that form you lost information.

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How is the structure damaged? Change need not equal damage, either at the nucleotide or amino acid level.

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A random change almost always equals damage. Or fine tuning, but never an improvement, or an increase in information. So yeah, it's a damage, like the sickle cell disease.

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Then what function do you think this amino acid was specified for?

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It is the part of the gyrase's structure.

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You presumably mean CSI here or 'functional information' since information streams into us from the universe all the time from a countless number of material entities.

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Exactly, that is what I mean. And no, it's not information that is coming to us, those are just signals. Unless you mean Shannon information, well than anything goes!

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I suppose you must have overlooked a good few publications that describe, in detail, just this kind of mutation. Gene duplication is a very common occurrence in nature, it's been observed in genomes that have been sequenced. These genomes have been found to be riddled with duplicated genes, sometimes even multiple versions of the same original, which were subsequently altered by yet more mutations, making the original and the copy (or copies) diverge. It definitely happens, and you can read about in the literature. Your denial of it is as ridiculous as denying that the moon exists.

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I do not deny that genes exist. I do not deny that mutations exist. I do not deny that gene duplication exist.I deny that this above mentioned process can bring forth new biological functions. Because it can't. It has never been OBSERVED to.Notice the all caps OBSERVED. What countles articles do, is they ASSUME that this process brought about new biological functions. They never observed it, not in a single case. They only assume that that is what happened.

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I don't know which textbooks were used to teach you, but they can't have been about biology, that much is clear.

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Well, now you got me where you wanted, huh!?

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Evolution isn't "supposed" to pick anything. It simply happens that the fittest have a better chance to procreate than the less fit. Anything that gets you among the fittest will better your chances, and new information is no exception to the rule. For example, if all your siblings can only digest leaves of one type, and you develop a mutation that enables you to digest leaves of another type, which would constitute new information in your genome, then you stand a good chance of doing better in life than your siblings.

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Yes, but this is a myth. This doesn't happen. You don't have to explain this process to me, I know how it is supposed to work. But the point remains that it doesn't happen.Did you read Genetic Entropy by Sanford? The genomes are constantly deteriorating, and losing fitness and information. They could not have evolved because of the noise. The more fit do not have enough advantage to be selected by natural selection, so on average, they don't get selcted. The less fit do.And what about near-neutral mutations (NNM)? They are constantly accumulating themselves in our genome and reducing it's informational content. By definition NNM can not be selected out by natural selection becasue of the noise.Like I said, your story does not happen in real life. The opposite is happening, all the genomes are deteriorating.Edited by Smooth Operator, : No reason given.

That's true, but if you look at your reply you'll see that you've broken up entire explanations into little individual pieces which you address separately. The explanations have to be considered as a whole. Each of your objections only makes sense if the particular little piece you're responding to was all I said. Let me tie it all back together for you, and I'm going to change the example slightly.Say we're walking through the woods and we come to a clearing with several large rocks. I ask you to write down how many rocks are in the clearing, and you do so. Where did the information you wrote down come from? It didn't come from you, right? You couldn't have written down the correct information while your eyes were closed. You could have written some number down and that would still be information, but it wouldn't be the information for the number of rocks in the clearing except by luck.So the information about the number of rocks in the clearing did not come from a mind. There is no natural law that information can only come from a mind.These posts are growing long, so I'm not going to address the secondary issues you raise, but there were a couple significant things: This is the probability of the flagellum genes forming in a single step by chance. We are all in agreement that this would be incredibly unlikely. But these genes didn't come about in a single step by chance. Mutations in bacteria like E. coli (whose flagellum is Dembski's example) occur at the rate of about 10^-8 per base pair per generation. It took many, many steps (generations) followed by natural selection to produce the bacterial flagellum, not one. Fitness and "biological functions" go hand in hand. How sharp a carnivore's teeth are is part of "biological function" and is directly related to fitness. Because the environment selects for fitness it is also selecting the "biological functions" that are the expressions of genes, which are in turn in a continuous process of change due to mutation.--Percy

Once again when we look deep into the basis for your argument we find religion...From the wiki page on John Sanford:

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An advocate of intelligent design, in 2005 Sanford testified in the Kansas evolution hearings on behalf of intelligent design, during which he denied the principle of common descent and "humbly offered ... that we were created by a special creation, by God."

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You can defend yourself here: Message 1Edited by Catholic Scientist, : No reason given.

Species of Antarctic fish have evolved antifreeze in their blood. The gene that codes for the antifreeze protein originates from a copy of another gene that codes for a digestive enzyme. We know this because there are large parts of the antifreeze gene that are too similar to the digestive enzyme gene to be coincidental. So a copy that was subsequently altered by mutation has given rise to a new biological function not present in the fish before: antifreeze in the bloodstream. It's been OBSERVED and DOCUMENTED (note the capitals). When you use the word 'fit', are you still writing in English?

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"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." - Charles Darwin.

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That's true, but if you look at your reply you'll see that you've broken up entire explanations into little individual pieces which you address separately. The explanations have to be considered as a whole. Each of your objections only makes sense if the particular little piece you're responding to was all I said. Let me tie it all back together for you, and I'm going to change the example slightly.

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If you made any sense, than your argument would be fine in parts, or in a whole.

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Say we're walking through the woods and we come to a clearing with several large rocks. I ask you to write down how many rocks are in the clearing, and you do so. Where did the information you wrote down come from? It didn't come from you, right? You couldn't have written down the correct information while your eyes were closed. You could have written some number down and that would still be information, but it wouldn't be the information for the number of rocks in the clearing except by luck.

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But the rocks by themselves do not represent information. The paper and the number on them does. Becasue rocks and their number can be explained by a natural process. Teh paper in my hand and the in on it with the number on the paper can not be explained by a natural process not guided by an intelligence.

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So the information about the number of rocks in the clearing did not come from a mind. There is no natural law that information can only come from a mind.

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Actually it did, since I wrote it. The rocks themselves do not present any information. Anything you try to apply to rocks as information is entirely subjective.

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This is the probability of the flagellum genes forming in a single step by chance. We are all in agreement that this would be incredibly unlikely. But these genes didn't come about in a single step by chance. Mutations in bacteria like E. coli (whose flagellum is Dembski's example) occur at the rate of about 10-8 per base pair per generation. It took many, many steps (generations) followed by natural selection to produce the bacterial flagellum, not one.

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But evolution won't help you because of the NFL theorem. That is why Dembski is justified in calculating the formation of the flagellum by blind chance. Since evolution in nature equals blind chance in creating new biological functions. That was actually the whole point of the book. To justify calculating the odds of the flagellum forming all at once, since NFL precludes evolution helping it to form more likely.

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Fitness and "biological functions" go hand in hand.

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No my dear, they do not. This is like saying that red is green. You just made a big mistake.People in Africa who get sickle cell wil have their red blood cells deformed. Thus their genomes will be reduced in information, and their biological functions will be reduced. But guess what? In their environment, they will be more fit than others. So they will be more likely to survive. And they will do so. Not because they evolved some new helpful biological function. But because of loss of information.

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How sharp a carnivore's teeth are is part of "biological function" and is directly related to fitness. Because the environment selects for fitness it is also selecting the "biological functions" that are the expressions of genes, which are in turn in a continuous process of change due to mutation.

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Teeth are not a biological function. The process of chewing is, ATP synthase is, but not teeth themselves.Just because nature might select somebody with sharper teet, plays absolutely no role, non whatsoever, if that same individual has mutations that will in the future form a more powerful ATP synthase. Natural selecton will not later on select some other individual who will have some other mutation that accumulates with the first individual to build this new ATP synthse, just becasue it had sharper teeth, or longer legs.Biological functions and fitnes are not correlated. That is why natural selection is useles in selecting mutations that are supposed to build new structures like the ATP synthase.

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Species of Antarctic fish have evolved antifreeze in their blood.

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No they didn't they had it all along. It just get's turned on when they need it.

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The gene that codes for the antifreeze protein originates from a copy of another gene that codes for a digestive enzyme.

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No, it doesn't that's an assumption based on the assumption that evolution is true.

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We know this because there are large parts of the antifreeze gene that are too similar to the digestive enzyme gene to be coincidental.

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A lot of things are similar, so what? Similarity is not evidence for common ancestry. It can be evidence for common design. Similar cars are not evidence for common descent, but for common design. So why should we believe that similar genes are evidence of common descent, but of common design?

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So a copy that was subsequently altered by mutation has given rise to a new biological function not present in the fish before:

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Actually it was always there. It resided in the so called junk-DNA part of the genome. This part is used to regulate the gene expresion. When it got cold the genes were expressed differently. No new function was actually expressed. Even if it was it would be no evidence for evolution, since the function was already there, jus not expresed before.What actually happened is that the enzymes were regulated in a way to bind the ice cristals closer together so they can't expand. There were just more of them. Nothing new evolved. No new structure came about. Than the blood of the fish does not freeze. The enzymes still perform the same function, but now it's just fine tuned for current low temperature.

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antifreeze in the bloodstream. It's been OBSERVED and DOCUMENTED (note the capitals).

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Yes, it has. And you are wrong about what it means.

Then I suggest reading peoples posts twice perhaps to make sure you are actually understanding what is written. I usually re-read any post I am replying to, its easy to miss things. It hasn't lost its strucuture. Its structure has change in a way that has no effect on its biological function but makes it less susceptible to antibiotics. It could have as many structural changes as it could stand that wouldn't effect its function and unless you have a wholly unique understanding of ID, as I'm beginning to think you do, surely you would have to accept that such changes don't represent a loss of information, since they don't affect function. To argue that since changing all the amino acids would render the protein non-functional that therefore any mutation must make the protein less functional is clearly wrong, it isn't even logical. But you haven't lost it in this case, it has simply changed. So you have had a change in information. Which given that the original information is probably still extant in the population leads us straight to Percy's examples of how allelic variants can represent informational change. And its replacement is an equally effective part of Gyrase's structure. Now you are just talking nonsense. In what way is a mutation that does nothing but benefit the protein by giving it resistance to an antibiotic comparable to sickle cell, other than that they are both mutations. As an aside aren't fine tunings supposed to be improvements albeit small ones? If not then what is the point of fine tuning?You now seem to be actually arguing that information is independent of biological function since you don't seem to care if the mutation affects it or not.Wouldn't it just be more sensible to agree that the source you quoted was overstating the case? I'm not asking you to accept increases in information even, simply that not all beneficial mutations need to be through a loss of information.TTFN,WK

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It hasn't lost its strucuture. Its structure has change in a way that has no effect on its biological function but makes it less susceptible to antibiotics. It could have as many structural changes as it could stand that wouldn't effect its function and unless you have a wholly unique understanding of ID, as I'm beginning to think you do, surely you would have to accept that such changes don't represent a loss of information, since they don't affect function. To argue that since changing all the amino acids would render the protein non-functional that therefore any mutation must make the protein less functional is clearly wrong, it isn't even logical.

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When did I say that any change leads to complete loss in functionality? Never. Neither did I say that it lost it structure completely. It lost a part of it. But a loss is a loss.

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But you haven't lost it in this case, it has simply changed. So you have had a change in information. Which given that the original information is probably still extant in the population leads us straight to Percy's examples of how allelic variants can represent informational change.

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Yes you did lose it. And yes it did change. But random changes do not just change things. The deteriorate them.

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And its replacement is an equally effective part of Gyrase's structure.

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What replacement are you talking about?

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Now you are just talking nonsense. In what way is a mutation that does nothing but benefit the protein by giving it resistance to an antibiotic comparable to sickle cell, other than that they are both mutations. As an aside aren't fine tunings supposed to be improvements albeit small ones? If not then what is the point of fine tuning?

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They are the same in teh way that the structure has been damaged. In the gyrase's case, the change was not noticeable. But the loss of information occured.In the case of sickle cell, the deformation of the structure of the red blood cells had a large impact on the human body. And again the loss of information occured.In both cases loss of information and loss of structure and gain in resistance occured. In one case the loss hade less, and in other it had more impact on the function of the organism.

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You now seem to be actually arguing that information is independent of biological function since you don't seem to care if the mutation affects it or not.

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Wouldn't it just be more sensible to agree that the source you quoted was overstating the case? I'm not asking you to accept increases in information even, simply that not all beneficial mutations need to be through a loss of information.

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I already said, soem mutations are fine tuning. But most of them are loss of information.

Bare assertion is no substitute for actual facts. Give us some scientific data, in what way has the substitution in the Gyrase caused a deterioration?I'm quite prepared to accept it might cause a change of function, but not in the complete absence of any evidence which is al you or your source provide. My own literature searches have not produced anything suggesting a loss of function, but many of the papers on such mutations don't look into that aspect of things. So you say, but where is the evidence? And you claim evolutionists accept things on faith. So if you are prepared to accept this happens in principle then why not in this particular case? Why couldn't this simply be fine tuning with a benefit, no loss of information but no gain either?TTFN,WKEdited by Wounded King, : No reason given.Edited by Wounded King, : No reason given.

The problem is that your objections often miss the point because you focus on each little brush stroke and never see the bigger picture. You see only little needle stitches and miss the larger fabric. Recall that with eyes closed you could not have written down the number of rocks. That's because the information didn't come from you. The information came from the rocks and was communicated to you via light. There is no law that states that information can only come from a mind. I know that Gitt and Spetner tell you this, but as I said before, their ideas are not based upon any research or mathematics. Instead of labeling this slander this time just provide references to their research papers. You compared two algorithms, random and evolution. Evolution is informed by the environment, random is not, and therefore evolution has more information available to it and doesn't violate the NFL theorem.Let me illustrate with a simple example. We have bacteria in a petri dish whose growth medium is deficient in a necessary nutrient but abundant in another nutrient that the bacteria are unable to metabolize. The bacteria experience new random mutations with each generation.The random algorithm randomly selects which bacteria get to contribute to the next generation. Any bacterium that may have experienced a mutation that allows it to metabolize the abundant nutrient has only a random chance of being selected to pass on its genes.The evolutionary algorithm selects bacteria on the basis of how successful they are in their environment. Now any bacteria with a mutation allowing them to metabolize the abundant nutrient will thrive and be very likely to pass their genes on to the next generation. This is how evolution outperforms random. Sickle cell anemia is part of biological function which allows those with only one copy of the gene to be more resistant to malaria and therefore to be more likely to survive to reproduce in their environment, an increase in fitness.You can't separate fitness from biological function. They are intimately related. An organism is the sum total of its biological functions and their interactions, and how well that organism fares in its environment is a measure of fitness. Nature selects according to how successfully an organism competes within its environment. If sharper teeth allow it to better compete then whatever genes are responsible for the sharper teeth will be passed on to its descendants. If a "more powerful ATP synthase" allow it compete better then that too will be passed on to its descendants.But lets look at the flip side. Let's say that the organism is not a predator but a leaf eater. Sharper teeth might in that case make it less competitive since the sharper teeth tend more to slice and dice the leaves but not to mash them properly, which let's say is helpful to this organism's digestion. Unable to derive enough nutrition from its leaf diet, and in addition burdened with frequent indigestion, it never finds a mate and the mutation dies with it. This, too, is evolution in action.--PercyEdited by Percy, : Spelling.

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Bare assertion is no substitute for actual facts. Give us some scientific data, in what way has the substitution in the Gyrase caused a deterioration?

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It deteriorated the structure.

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I'm quite prepared to accept it might cause a change of function, but not in the complete absence of any evidence which is al you or your source provide. My own literature searches have not produced anything suggesting a loss of function, but many of the papers on such mutations don't look into that aspect of things.

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I never said it was a loss of function. I might be in other cases. But not in this one. It was the loss of ctructure in this case. Which is a loss in information, which over a long period of time, leads to loss of function.

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So you say, but where is the evidence? And you claim evolutionists accept things on faith.

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FORM = STRUCTURE = INFORMATION.LOSS OF STRUCTURE = LOSS OF FORM = LOSS OF INFORMATION.

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So if you are prepared to accept this happens in principle then why not in this particular case? Why couldn't this simply be fine tuning with a benefit, no loss of information but no gain either?

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Because the structure deteriorated.

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Recall that with eyes closed you could not have written down the number of rocks. That's because the information didn't come from you. The information came from the rocks and was communicated to you via light.

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There is no information in the rocks in the first place. The information that there are three rocks comes from me. That there really are three rocks, by themselves is not an information.

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There is no law that states that information can only come from a mind.

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It's not a law, it's something that has never been observed. Therefore I should not believe it.

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I know that Gitt and Spetner tell you this, but as I said before, their ideas are not based upon any research or mathematics. Instead of labeling this slander this time just provide references to their research papers.

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Gitt's work is based on Shannon. But it improves it. But not in a mathematical department, but in general. So there is absolutly no sense to say that his arguments are not valid becasue he didn't use math. He wasn't even supposed to.Statistics
Syntax
Semantics
Pragmatics
ApobeticsTell me which of this levels is not part of information, and why. And while you're at it, define information in general.

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You compared two algorithms, random and evolution. Evolution is informed by the environment, random is not, and therefore evolution has more information available to it and doesn't violate the NFL theorem.

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Random searches are also informaed while they are running. But none of them has any PRIOR knowledge. Therefore they are both useless.

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Let me illustrate with a simple example. We have bacteria in a petri dish whose growth medium is deficient in a necessary nutrient but abundant in another nutrient that the bacteria are unable to metabolize. The bacteria experience new random mutations with each generation.

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The random algorithm randomly selects which bacteria get to contribute to the next generation. Any bacterium that may have experienced a mutation that allows it to metabolize the abundant nutrient has only a random chance of being selected to pass on its genes.

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The evolutionary algorithm selects bacteria on the basis of how successful they are in their environment. Now any bacteria with a mutation allowing them to metabolize the abundant nutrient will thrive and be very likely to pass their genes on to the next generation. This is how evolution outperforms random.

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Otperforms random search in what? Selecting the fitest? Could be. But not in getting you new biological functions.

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Sickle cell anemia is part of biological function which allows those with only one copy of the gene to be more resistant to malaria and therefore to be more likely to survive to reproduce in their environment, an increase in fitness.

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This is not a biological function! What are you talking about? Do you even know how sickle cell works? It DEFORMS red blood cells so malaria can't attach to them very well. This is not a biological function, this is deterioration of red blood cells.

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You can't separate fitness from biological function. They are intimately related. An organism is the sum total of its biological functions and their interactions, and how well that organism fares in its environment is a measure of fitness.

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You understood ABSOLUTELY NOTHING what I wrote. Nothing. Not a single thing. Please concentrate.Yes, I know, that fitness will drop in general if you destroy a biological function. Yes, that is a fact. But what I was trying to tell you, that just because natural selection will select those in Africa which have sickle cell, that doesn't mean that natural selection has selected in that same individual for a new biological function. It has not selected a genome that is going to evolve some new miniature machine like the ATP synthase. That is becasue nature does not select fitness in correlation to biological functions.It only searches for the fitest. It is not searching for new molecular machines.

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Nature selects according to how successfully an organism competes within its environment. If sharper teeth allow it to better compete then whatever genes are responsible for the sharper teeth will be passed on to its descendants. If a "more powerful ATP synthase" allow it compete better then that too will be passed on to its descendants.

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But lets look at the flip side. Let's say that the organism is not a predator but a leaf eater. Sharper teeth might in that case make it less competitive since the sharper teeth tend more to slice and dice the leaves but not to mash them properly, which let's say is helpful to this organism's digestion. Unable to derive enough nutrition from its leaf diet, and in addition burdened with frequent indigestion, it never finds a mate and the mutation dies with it. This, too, is evolution in action.

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Again, you dont' get it, you just dont' get it. Yes, I know what you are saying. That is somewhat true. But the point is that this process of selection is not correlated with evolving NEW biological functions that weren't there before.Tell me what exactly do sharper teeth have to do with a molecular machine that still does not exist in the organism? Nothing! Absolutely nothing.

Changed the structure. Changed the information, without affecting the function. Aren't you the one making posts supporting the idea of function as an essential component of measuring information in sequence analyses? If so how are you measuring the information change/loss in this case where you admit it doesn't affect the function? Change of structure = change of form? = change of information?Except if you knew any biology you would know that a change in the primary sequence of a protein doesn't necessarily mean a change in the higher level structures. So in fact in many cases a change in the primary structure will not lead to any change in the secondary or tertiary. There are obvious instances where this is not the case, as with the sickle cell anaemia example, but a change in primary sequence need not lead to a change in the higher levels of structure, as you would know if you understood biology. The fact that enough changes will cause a change doesn't mean that any specific change necessarily does, for example not every mutation in haemoglobin leads to sickle cell. This doesn't get any truer just because you keep repeating it. Other than through its effect on function how can you justify characterising this as a deterioration? Can you quantify the informational loss in the absence of a change in function? If so how?You simply assume that any change in the amino acid sequence is a loss of information, but there is no reason for anyone else to drink your cool aid unless you can make a more compelling argument than simply repeating your contention ad nauseam.TTFN,WK