PROOF against evolution

By the same definition of "information" you appear to be using, a 30 volume set of randomly generated characters contains as much information as your encyclopedias.

Oh, then when you equated DNA to the encyclopedia you weren't talking about the majority of DNA, which is either random or repetitive. Too bad DNA isn't strictly a code, per se, it's a system for the physical catalysis of polypeptide chains, and, as such, is highly dependant on the physical medium. I've always suspected information theory had nothing to do with life, and your quotes have really proved it for me, thanks.

You're quite wrong about this, I believe. Let me dredge up some data:

quote:

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INSECTA: Acrida, 23 / Aphid, 5, 6, 8, 12 / Musca, 12 / Lethocerus, 8, 30 / Cimex, 24-29 / Lysandra, 380 / Bombyx, 50-71 / Cicindela, 20-24 / Calliphora, 12 / Drosophila, 8-12 / Metapodius, 22-26.

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REPTILA: Elaphe, 36 / Hemidactylus, 46 / Alligator, 32 / Chamaeleon, 24 / Lacerta, 36, 38 / Emys, 50 / Anguis, 36, 44.

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MAMMALIA: Ornithorhynchus, 70 / Didelphys, 17-22 / Erinaceus, 48 / Sorex, 23 / Lepus, 36-46 / Peromyscus, 48, 52 / Microtus, 42, 46, 50 / Apodemus, 46, 48, 50 / Mus, 40, 44 / Ratus, 46, 62 / Cania, 50, 64, 73 / Felis, 35, 38 / Bos, 16, 20, 60 / Capra, 60 / Ovis, 33, 48, 54, 60 / Sus, 18, 38, 40 / Equus, 60, 66 / Rhesus, 42, 48 / Homo 46.

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From a creationist site, no less. This is a list of some of the major taxa of animals and their respective number of chromosomes. I can only assume that's what you meant by "complex". If you had another measure of complexity in mind you'll have to tell me what it is.Anyway, that's us at the end (Homo) with 46 chromosomes. As you can see from the rest of them there's almost no corellation between the "advancement" of form and the number of chromosomes.And, why should there be? As I said, all DNA does is generate proteins. That's it. That's all it does. The human body is comprised of proteins just like the body of any other living thing - to a large degree, it's composed of the very same proteins as other mammals, especially apes.The human body is not any more complex than that of a gorilla, nor that of any other mammal. And very simple organisms sometimes have an enourmous number of chromosomes, like the Lysandra (butterflies, I believe?). So clearly chromosome complexity has nothing to do with complexity of form. What prevents a natural process from creating "information"? I don't believe information exists in any form outside our own heads. It's like saying a bunny-shaped cloud has the "information" to be bunny-shaped. Any "information" you perceive in DNA, in the sense that there's information in an encyclopedia, is purely in your own head.So far you have yet to address my point that DNA is far more random and repetitive than the definition of information you quoted would allow.

I don't understand the point of your analogy. What's the same about a personal computer and a meta-catalyzing molecule?The arrangement of DNA isn't a code, in the sense that a code is an arbitrary arrangement of symbols and meanings. The arrangement of DNA catalyzes the formation of specific polypeptide chains. It's not information in the semiotic sense of signs, symbols, and referents.

Yeah, I agree. We're far from perfect. Would a perfectly designed genome have a gene for the production of Vitamin C that would work perfectly if it wasn't terminally crippled by a genetic error? (And if so, why do the higher primates share the same error?)

I'm trying to chase you down with this. Message 35, please, at your lesuire. Any response?I guess my point in all this was to disabuse you of any notion that the complexity of DNA has anything at all to do with the complexity of form, as well as any notion that human DNA is somehow special just because humans might be.[This message has been edited by crashfrog, 07-07-2003]

Like, the amount of nucleotides? Generally, the more chromosomes, the more nucleotides, I would assume. Chromosome length does vary, but as a rule of thumb I think it can be used, much as you could say that the more sentences, the more words.How else would you measure the information in a cell?Why would a human cell have to have more? Human bodies aren't doing anything a gorilla body isn't, or a dog body, or even a rat body. It's all proteins. To a large degree it's almost all the same proteins.

Nancy is wrong, I'm afraid. At least the way I see it.Random processes can generate random strings. Say, random arrangements of nucleotides, or letters, or what have you. Each random string has, by total coincidence, some amount of "information" in it. I mean, if I generate random strings of letters, eventually I'll get some words - maybe even some sentences. Natural selection weeds out the chaff from the wheat - leaving only those strings that have high information content. They still also contain a large amount of junk, of course. Just as the DNA of every living thing contains an enourmous amount of junk.I mean, it's a known mathematical truth that in an infinite string of random characters, you'll find every possible string of characters that can be imagined. Everything from Moby Dick to "My Love is like a red, red rose." It has to be there. Of course, there's a trans-astronomical amount of junk in between each "useful" segment.Natural selection just weeds out the junk, leaving that which is useful.What about that is unreasonable to you? Except for the conclusion, of course - but you can't just reject valid reasoning simply because you don't like where it leads.

You may wish to reconsider your view of DNA to be more inline with the views of actual geneticists. The majority of the DNA is non-functional "junk" DNA. Random noise. Genetic static. It'd be like an encyclopedia where, between each page of entries there's about ten pages of random characters. Sometimes more, sometimes less. And of course the whole thing's in Morse Code, too, so you can't just read it off the page, which means you don't immediately know where the junk is.Doesn't sound like any encyclopedia I want to read. Why would anyone assert that DNA is full of highly organized information?

Actually, what your article says is that there's less junk, not no junk.Anyway, saying it's "junk" isn't to say that its presence is without survival advantage - spreading out the "real" genes with junk protects them against mutation - like, not putting all your eggs in the same basket."Junk" has never meant "useless". It just means "doesn't code for proteins".Genes distributed at random, control structures all over the place - does that sound highly organized to you? It's like opening your Britannica and finding all the articles out of order.

It's implied in the next paragraph when they talk about precisely what they found:

quote:

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The new results suggest that the genomes of both organisms contain at least twice as much critically important genetic material as previously believed

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Twice as much "real" DNA still leaves "junk" DNA. The junk still outnumbers the codons. There's just less of it. Speculation. I'd say there's nothing likely about it. I was actually unaware of this article. I was aware that they had discovered unexpected functions for some DNA regarded as "junk", but no one to my knowledge has proposed that there's no junk at all in the DNA. After all, mutation happens all the time. If all DNA was functional, a mutation would always interrupt a necessary function. The junk isn't just there, it has to be there. It's a safety issue.

Given that Buz may or may not agree with this I do plan to be a little more careful about referring to those stretches of DNA as "junk". He's had that result at least.They don't code for functional proteins, and their sequence may be more or less random, but they're certainly not without advantage.

I guess I was trying to acknowledge that the mere presence of large, non-coding, randomly generated sequences of DNA prevents mutations at more sensitive sites, to a large degree. "Junk" kind of implies that there's no selective advantage at all, which doesn't seem to be true - the presence of that DNA prevents - soaks up, kind of - mutations at more important sites, to a degree.But I'm operating at the fringe of my knowledge here, so you may disagree with my interpretation of the work "junk".

Well, I think his point was that NS + RM is an insufficient explanation for the "complexity" of a human being, because you'd need as much complexity in the DNA, and RM can't give you that much complexity.Which is of course not really true. Apparently DNA only has to be so complex to produce animals of varying "complexity" or "advancement". Of course all this still stems from a view of evolution that puts man at the top of a very long ladder, with all other species on the lower rungs.As has been pointed out, evolution is a bush, not a ladder. Man isn't at the top but simply one more branch.I have yet to hear a definition of information that I feel is relevant to DNA in the first place, as well as a definition of "complexity" that's different from total genetic material. Honestly, if this is the best it can do I have to say that so far, "information theory" sounds like a "load of tosh", as they might say. I'm sure it's a great theory but I don't understand its relevance to biology.

I just see information theory as too simplistic a model of communication. I'm an arty type, so I always see communication in three relationships - the relationship of the artist (or speaker) to the audience (or listener), the relationship of the artist to the work (or the communication), and the relationship of the work to the audience.These aren't equivalent, which is why debate is always possible about what is meant, and what was said, and what this or that "signifies". I just don't see how something as tenuous and open to interpretation as "information" can be the basis for any kind of scientific theory.It's like, how much information is there in a Chinese dictionary if nobody can read Chinese? How do you tell the difference between a Chinese dictionary and a book's worth of random Chinese characters?