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Author Topic:   New genes do arise in the genome
Wounded King
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Posts: 4149
From: Cincinnati, Ohio, USA
Joined: 04-09-2003


Message 7 of 7 (489548)
11-28-2008 5:13 AM
Reply to: Message 1 by Coyote
11-27-2008 8:42 PM


I think that this article is important because it is filling in some of the details by which evolution occurs, and because it contradicts a claim often made by creationists (such as Carl Wieland) who claims that "Natural selection adds no information [genes], in fact it reduces it" and "Evolution requires a way to add new information [genes]."
I think these 2 claims are quite distinct and it is their conflation that makes this argument such a misleading one.
I would agree with the idea that Natural selection doesn't add new information as such. The basis of novel genetic sequences is the sort of mutational molecular mechanisms you touch on with your reference. These can be single nucleotide mutations, gene duplications, exon shuffling, retrotransposition, deletions or larger scale genetic changes. Unless one uses a very subjective measure of information, like Gitt's, it is hard to make any argument that these mechanisms can't change the information level of a genome in either direction.
I'd suggest that the only form of information we might consider Natural selection to contribute to would be the sort of complex specified information which Dembski puts forward. It is Natural selection which allows the maintenance of the incremental changes in information produced by mutation and allows these changes to accumulate in such a way as to produce sequences coding for highly specific functions, either regulatory or in terms of their corresponding protein structures. Such information can certainly be considered both Complex and Specific though obviously ID proponents deny that normal molecular mechanisms and evolution can account for it. Even in this case though I would suggest that Natural selection itself is not adding any information but simply tending to maintain beneficial information containing sequences when they arise, and indeed to tend to eradicate detrimental ones when they arise.
Given the higher proportion of deleterious to beneficial mutations observed we might even allow that the action of natural selection in these cases might tend to be the removal of deleterious novel information rather than its maintenance.
The second statement ...
"Evolution requires a way to add new information [genes]."
Is clearly correct, but a singularly flawed argument given all the known mechanisms for new genetic information to arise.
I think you yourself are conflating Natural selection and evolution in a way that is confusing. You have fallen for Wieland's bait and switch.
The really striking lie in Wieland's article, and the one you are actually addressing here, is ...
It has been shown convincingly that observed mutations do not add information, and that mutation is seriously hampered on theoretical grounds in this area.
This is just an outright lie, there is no conceivable way to justify this claim without resorting to most handwavey and subjective definitions of information, which of course is exactly what Wieland does by using Gitt's information 'measure', which is no measure at all but simply a value judgment based on a lot of pre-loaded assumptions in favour of intelligent design.
TTFN,
WK

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1 by Coyote, posted 11-27-2008 8:42 PM Coyote has not replied

  
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