If evolution is wrong, is Creation right?

One more thing, mainly for laughs, if your brain is the result of chemicals getting all mixed up (a single cell of it is actually more complex than the space shuttle) how can you trust your thinking process??

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Genetic information is information in the gene code. Does that make sense? New information would be EXACTLY the same as NEW INFORMATION.

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Do you realize that in defining the word "information", you used the word "information" four times?

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Someone said anything Hovind comes up with is wrong. Sounds like a BIG predjudice to me.

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What I said is that he doesn't even have a basic understanding of high school biology. His own statements (such as the one you paraphrase in the above post) bear this out. So why would he be at all qualified to speak on evolution?

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The gene code only allows for black, white and everything in between, so they can change WITHIN that but not outside of it i. e. purple fur.

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Then what's the deal with red squirrels? [This message has been edited by Dan Carroll, 02-02-2004]

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"It isn't faith that makes good science, it's curiosity."
-Professor Barnhard, The Day the Earth Stood Still

Doesn't anyone know what that means? Look in a dictionary. Define any word. When I am typing, I'm using tons of words, why do I have to define THAT one? Every scientist should have a dictionary handy.
Information, they say the dna in one segment of the human body could be written in 40,000 books, as INFORMATION. It contains the stuff the body needs for where to grow what. Why do peoples arms always grow out from their shoulders? Its because of genetic INFORMATION. You like to say this, but give me a few statements that show he doesn't have an understanding for high school biology! Call him up and give him a high school test of biology, and he will prove your statement false. That wasn't a smart statement, I was only giving an example. I wasn't giving you the actaul facts. That was a theoretical example.
And to prove my point, the red squirrel was created red, and if two red squirrels were taken and bred billions of times, they could be orange, red, or brown, because thats all the same color more or less pigment. But they will NEVER become black if all the trees are black, proving that there is a LIMIT. Unless of course the first two squirrels had it in the gene code to possibly be black. To express the point even better, they would NEVER grow wings right?
At least that kind of change has never been observed, showing that its not SCIENCE.{Edited to use the shaded quote boxes, instead of having the quotes enclosed in long strings of (") markes. MPW - I SUGGEST you adopt this methodology. - Adminnemooseus}Sorry, Adminnemooseus, I didn't know how... I guess that proves I'm dumb and have no knowlege of science, lol. I will from now on[This message has been edited by Adminnemooseus, 02-02-2004][This message has been edited by MPW, 02-02-2004]

I think it seems easy to understand to you because you do not have a proper understanding of information theory. You see, the mathematical treatment of information stipulates that wherever selection operates, information increases. It is measured (in Shannon theory) by an inverse proportion of the number of possibilities and the number of selections. The formula is Information (in bits) = -log₂(s/p) where s = selections and p = possibilities.Since you've conceded that selection operates on biological organisms, you've also conceded that information increases. It's just that you don't understand how information is calculated, and so you didn't know that by conceding the former, you've conceded the latter. Really? What is it? Give me a break. See? This is what you get for pulling arguments from Kent Hovind's website. If you don't want to get ridiculed, you'll need to seek a better source for info.Everything does NOT "go down the tubes" given time. Look at the accelerating improvements in human technology for an obvious falsification of your statement. Surely you won't assert that technology is getting worse, will you? Please first show unambiguously that this is in fact a closed universe. I assure you, a Nobel Prize awaits you if you can meet that challenge. And I will repeat: What is it? And we've never seen Pluto complete an orbit around the sun, yet it is the most reasonable interpretation of the data. That's how science works. Since we've seen the closer planets complete solar orbits ("micro"-orbiting), it is reasonable to infer that the farthest planet has a complete solar orbit as well ("marcro"-orbiting). Your argument seems to insist we shouldn't believe that Pluto can complete its orbit since we've only seen complete orbits for inner planets. But what's there to stop it? Some are, and some aren't. It depends, really. And I'll repeat again: What is the limit?

This is, of course, your repeated assertion, and you've truly "proved" nothing. Now I request that you cease asserting this until you can back it up with some actual evidence. Perhaps you can formulate a testible hypothesis and describe what evidence might be falsify it. That's how scientists operate.

MPWWhere do you get the silly idea that the brain is the result of chemicals getting all mixed up. It behooves me to ask if you might question your thinking processes.You understand obviously that there is complexity within the makeup of the cells of the body icluding the brain but that is exactly how science expects it should occur.The key to the understanding of it though is simple laws can produce complex behaviour.

I think this topic is showing signs of a potential "meltdown". I encourage all to try to "take in easy".I haven't completed reviewing the more recent additions to this topic, but I also encourage all to try to (continue to?) stick to the topic, as defined by the topic title (message 1 was overly diverse).Personally, I really don't want this one turning into another "information theory" topic.Adminnemooseus

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No, that doesn't make sense. In order to define information, you have to avoid using undefined terms ... such as "information". Ah, OK, you mean new abilities. There's lots of examples of that. For example, the ability to digest nylon. Evolution and Information: The Nylon Bug. Yes, I'm sorry to say it is. You are claiming to know more than the thousands of people who have actualy studied these subjects on the basis of a few biased and ignorant Christian websites. It's not an argument, it's a question. How can we discuss kinds if we don't know what they are? Sorry, no. Oh, I don't doubt that. However, I'll bet a lot of money that you can't find a quote that:A) We haven't seen before. DO you reallly think tyou're the first?b) Is not incomplete or otherwise altered in a way that completely alters the obvious meaning of what was written, when the entire context is considered. Consider some quotes from creationists:

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If I don't debate someone, it's because I don't have a case.
Jonathan Sarfati posting as Socrates on TWeb

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I am a young-age creationist because the Bible indicates the universe is young. Given what we currently think we understand about the world, the majority of the scientific evidence favors an old earth and universe, not a young one. I would therefore say that anyone who claims that the earth is young for scientific evidence alone is scientifically ignorant.
attributed to Kurt Wise in an email, 2003.

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No, of course I haven't done lab research on the systems described in Darwin's Black Box.
an email from Michael Behe to the Baptist Board Administrator, 2003.

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And one of the strongest arguments for the validity of radiometric dating is that the methods agree.
from The radiometric dating game by David Plaisted, 1998.

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I had either stupidly or dishonestly reversed the time axis of the text’s figure to get my figure
from D. Russell Humphreys, The Acts of the apostates, 1998.

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...various dating methods agree that the earth is 4.5 billion years old.
John Woodmorappe, Studies in creationism and flood geology ICR Impact 238.

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Do these quotes accurately reflect the views of the people who wrote them? Do the quotes that you offer accurately reflect the views of the people who wrote them? Not prejudice; a rational conclusion based on analysis of the evidence (Kent's published works). Ken's too far out for even most creationsists; as Answers in Genesis says at No webpage found at provided URL: Maintaining Creationist Integrity:

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As part of this, AiG published a particular article entitled Arguments we think creationists should NOT use, and followed this with a related Creation magazine article 'Moving forwardarguments we think creationists shouldn’t use'. This was not aimed at any particular person or organization, but was produced as a result of the collective wisdom of AiG’s trained scientists and other professionals, based on years of research and experience.

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When an attempted critique of this AiG article appeared on Kent Hovind’s Web site, AiG was somewhat surprised (and disappointed) to note that it frequently and significantly misrepresents and/or misunderstands the statements and positions made in our carefully researched document.

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In the interests of maintaining Christian/creationist integrity, we believed we had to respond to Kent Hovind’s critique (albeit with a heavy heart), particularly because of the mistakes in facts and logic which do the creationist cause no good.

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Before responding to specifics, it may be worth pointing out the obvious: If these arguments don’t convince fellow creationists, why would any creationist think they are going to convince evolutionists? And it would be worth revisiting our articles hyperlinked above for our motivation in compiling these dubious arguments.

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Read the entire article. Were you there when some Deity created everything? Did you observe it?At the risk of being obnoxious, are your parents married? Did you observe it?The idea that some event must be directly observed to be valid science is wrong on so many different levels. Do you thing that a murderer should be convicted only if the murder was observed? Events leave traces, and events that didn't happen don't leave traces, and studying these traces or noting their absence is valid scientific research. Lots of people have claimed there is a limit .. nobody has ever presented any evidence of a limit. Your inability to inmagine how such evolution might take place is evidence of your inability and nothing else. You are not making sense. It apears that you have essentially no knowledge of the science that you are criticising. Your writing is not simple; it's wrong.

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Doesn't anyone know what that means? Look in a dictionary.

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A quick spin by dictionary.com reveals seven different definitions for the word "information". It specifically notes that, when applied to various field of study (ie computer science, law) the word means very different things.So, as it applies to the field of evolutionary biology, what is your definition of "information"?MPW: What do you want?
Dan: The definition of "information".
MPW: You won't get it!
Dan: By hook or by crook, we will.

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You like to say this, but give me a few statements that show he doesn't have an understanding for high school biology!

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"Some bacteria today seem to cause problems. And same thing with viruses, they cause problems. But it may only be to the weaker individuals. When somebody gets a cold, if a virus is really causing this, why doesn't everybody get the cold?""I say, you guys have to get two cells to evolve from the [primordial] soup - of the opposite sex, in the same place, at the same time. It's a big world, you know, cells are kind of small - they've got to find each other.""If evolution is true, you could not know that it's true because your brain is nothing but chemicals. Think about that.""The entire theory of evolution is built upon the faulty assumption that the origin of the universe was 'billions of years ago'""And, yes, life is made of ninety two basic elements .....""I did not even know what being a humanist meant. I was only sixteen, and the brain doesn't even start developing until about twenty."Should I keep going?

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I wasn't giving you the actaul facts.

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No.Freakin'.Kidding.

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"It isn't faith that makes good science, it's curiosity."
-Professor Barnhard, The Day the Earth Stood Still

To me, that makes NO sense at all. Are you trying to throw me off here? Whatever you were trying to say, INFORMATION HAS NEVER BEEN ADDED TO THE GENE CODE. At least its never been observed. I will look up the references where famous evolutionists have admitted exactly that. HA HA HA. You have just proved my point. Firstly I did not get that from Hovind's website, I got that from the second law of thermodynamics. (The entropy of the universe is always increasing)
And technology, hehe, proves that it takes INTELLIGENT ENERGY to make something get better!!! Everything goes down the tubes with time
UNLESS energy is added. And not just energy, it must be intelligent, organized energy. We added a bunch of energy to Afghanistan a while back, and we didn't make anything get better.
So your technology example only proves that it takes intelligence to make anything get better. If evolution is true, where did the laws of thermodynamics come from anyway? Again, flawed reasoning. Pluto is in orbit. We are talking about impossible changes in animals! Reading your pluto example mmight make sense at first, but if you think, it doesn't compare in the least. We see what pluto is doing now. It likely has gone around the sun, and will go around the sun. But you cannot prove that it has reversed direction 8 times and became purple, than orange, then green, and now blue!! Thats what you are trying to tell me about the animals. We see them dong the same things, cats having cats, dogs having dogs, just like pluto goes around the sun! But ten you try to tell me that they went from a fish to a frog to a dinasour to a bird, thats like saying that pluto has reversed direction 8 times and became purple, than orange, then green, and now blue!!
Again, Your argument is evidence for my theory, not yours. Different for every animal. I already gave tons of examples. A bug will beccome resistant to pesticides, but it will never become resistant to my ax no matter how many times I do it. A squirrel will go from black to gray, but never grow wings. theres a limit. Give me any animal and I can explain what it can and can't do, where the limit is.And to conclude, in response to my saying:Your magic ingredient is time. But there is a limit! Animals can change and vary and adapt but they can NEVER be something else!crashfrog said:"Says you. Care to provide evidence?"Look, I don't have to provide evidence that a fish can't change to a frog. Its up to YOU to prove that it CAN or your theory is useless and not science.
Mike[This message has been edited by MPW, 02-02-2004]

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Doesn't anyone know what that means? Look in a dictionary. Define any word. When I am typing, I'm using tons of words, why do I have to define THAT one? Every scientist should have a dictionary handy.
Information, they say the dna in one segment of the human body could be written in 40,000 books, as INFORMATION. It contains the stuff the body needs for where to grow what. Why do peoples arms always grow out from their shoulders? Its because of genetic INFORMATION.

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Information CAN increase, and models based on DNA have shown this to be true (abstract can be found here.):
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Evolution of biological information.Schneider TD.National Cancer Institute, Frederick Cancer Research and Development Center, Laboratory of Experimental and Computational Biology, PO Box B, Frederick, MD 21702-1201, USA. toms@ncifcrf.govHow do genetic systems gain information by evolutionary processes? Answering this question precisely requires a robust, quantitative measure of information. Fortunately, 50 years ago Claude Shannon defined information as a decrease in the uncertainty of a receiver. For molecular systems, uncertainty is closely related to entropy and hence has clear connections to the Second Law of Thermodynamics. These aspects of information theory have allowed the development of a straightforward and practical method of measuring information in genetic control systems. Here this method is used to observe information gain in the binding sites for an artificial 'protein' in a computer simulation of evolution. The simulation begins with zero information and, as in naturally occurring genetic systems, the information measured in the fully evolved binding sites is close to that needed to locate the sites in the genome. The transition is rapid, demonstrating that information gain can occur by punctuated equilibrium.
-------------So, there can be information increases in DNA code as your fellow scientist has shown above. We could also talk about new genes being formed (nylon digestion by flavobacterium) and beneficial mutations (new human hemoglobin that confers malarial resistance). However, you may need to brush up on your genetics a bit judging by your inability to define information as it relates to DNA. Simply calling something information does nothing to define information. Information can be derived from non-information carriers. For example, we can derive information from tree rings in a way that can tell us about rain fall in previous seasons. However, tree rings are not in themselves information. What you need to do is show how DNA conveys information and how it is impossible for that information to increase through mutation and natural selection.As far as new features, some humans are born with tails that bear a likeness to other primate tails. Why is that? There have been chickens that have teeth that are similar to reptilian teeth. Why is that? Through evolution, we see these atavisms (human tails and chicken teeth) as left overs from common ancestors. How does creationism deal with this? We could also go into whale evolution and leg atavisms. You could check out whale evolution on this site. Just to give you an idea of the breadth of information, a little snippet from the above site: "The evidence that whales descended from terrestrial mammals is here divided into nine independent parts: paleontological, morphological, molecular biological, vestigial, embryological, geochemical, paleoenvironmental, paleobiogeographical, and chronological." Lots of information there, so dig in.I applaud your efforts to wade through the scientific realm. However, you seem to lack an understanding of how science works. To assert something as probable you must first have evidence. You seem to be working from the other side of the equation. You are assuming something to be probable withouth any evidence (creation) and then hand waving away counter-evidence. This is not how science is done.

Mike,
Sorry, but this is really annoying: Cut the crap and define kinds!!
Or, provide a link that you are using to define "kinds". Without definitions it is impossible to keep you from doing a "goalpost move".you: dogs, wolves, coyotes = one kind
you: apples and oranges are different kindsDoes this actually work for you??

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A squirrel will go from black to gray, but never grow wings.

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What about flying squirrels, that have glider wings?Let me guess, still not giving us actual facts? [This message has been edited by Dan Carroll, 02-02-2004]

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"It isn't faith that makes good science, it's curiosity."
-Professor Barnhard, The Day the Earth Stood Still

In reply to JonF... ITS STILL A BUG! And you'd better believe that digesting nylon already was in the gene code of at least some of the bugs. I am not claiming to know more than anyone. I am simply using common sense and logic. I am not any smarter than any of you, its just I'm right! Are you saying my arguments are irrelevant because of who I am and how uneducated I am and so forth? Address the issues! With a murder, we were here BEFORE and AFTER it occured. With evolution, only after. That does not compare. I wasn't there when God created, no. That takes faith. All my argument is is that evolution is not science! Again, SHOW ME where he has gone wrong. You just like saying this. Inability to imagine, now I'm being personally sent to the nut house? I can imagine the biggest fairy tale you've ever heard, Oh c'mon!
The limit is: Whatever is not in the gene code will not happen. You prove to me that limits do NOT occur! I'll bet you believe that a rock can't change to a stick in 2 seonds. Prove it! PROVE THAT OK?
PROVE THAT A ROCK CANNOT CHANGE TO A TREE IN 2 SECONDS! prove it!
We have never observed it, therefore its not science! My writing is much simpler than yours. And again, you are telling me that I know nothing, the classic "I'm smart, your dumb" attitude"
And all my arguments are no good because I have no knowledge of science! Imagine that.[This message has been edited by MPW, 02-02-2004]

Drop the word KINDS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I'm talking about genetic info being ADDED, which has never been observed.all these edits are to put the quotes right...[This message has been edited by MPW, 02-02-2004]