Evolution Logic

To be fair the codon table is not really adequate. Simply having this table wouldn't be sufficient to let you predict an ORF from a genomic sequence except in the very simplest of cases. This doesn't give the neccesary information to identify splice sites for differing isoforms for instance.TTFN,WK

Would you care to furnish any evidence to support these contentions?TTFN,WK

I think Rob was commenting on the neccessity of many accessory proteins for DNA replication, i.e. DNA alone in solution will not replicate and therefore is not, in and of itself, 'alive'.TTFN,WK

OK, so your 'evidence' is that people are saying this on AIG. As evidence goes that is pretty much non-existent.AIG making claims is no more convincing than you making claims.You could have saved yourself typing all that in by just by saying 'no'.If you think there are specific references in these links which provide actual evidence, say a study from the primary literature, then please provide those.TTFN,WKEdited by Wounded King, : No reason given.

The actual reactions happened entirely without human agency. If you want to argue that all god did was provide the right materials and the right conditions then there are many on these boards who will agree with you. But what you can't argue is that Urey-Miller doesn't show the formation of organic molecules important in life from inorganic precursors, which is all anyone has ever claimed it has done.The point of Urey-Miller is that abiogenesis can occur with the right conditions, and that is all. It isn't meant to be an argument against creationism or intelligent design. It does however put the lie to those who claim that abiogenesis itself cannot happen except by magical acts of special creation where whole animals just spring fully formed from the air or the earth.TTFN,WK

But when someone makes this claim about AIG they are prepared to back it up with examples when asked. If you looked at the many AIG links Rob posted you would find very few references in most of them, and the majority of those to other pages on AIG itself or other creationist sources. On TO on the other hand the references are to the primary scientific literature and are generally fairly extensive.So while you can make the claim just as well you would be hard put to back it up, as indeed you appear to be.TTFN,WK

Several people have asked for a specific definition of information, because without that they can't provide a reference which will accord with your views on what information is. There are a number of papers, not to mention simple maths, which can show that Shannon information can increase through a number of processes including duplication at various genomic level up to an including full genome duplications. Well you don't really seem to have given us that definition clearly anywhere in this thread, the closest you have got is saying... Which is not really very helpful, if all you want are mutations which increases the number of base pairs and/or substitute some bases then you can have references in abundance. The fact that amino acids do not spontaneously organise themselves into 'biologically meaningful' sequences does not mean that abiogenesis could not occur, protein first theories of abiogenesis are not those most commonly put forward because proteins do not, with some possible exceptions, exhibit the capacity for self replication.If all these researchers are doing science then why are you unable to provide a reference from the scientific literature? The most recent citation from Pubmed for Dean Kenyon seems to be from 1976 ( (Kenyon and Nissenbaum, 1976) the only more recent thing I can find is an article in Origins and Design from 1996 (Mills and Kenyon, 1996). Is this the cutting edge of ID/creationist research?TTFN,WK

This certainly is a complete waste of time. At the moment the converstion is going like this... Your question simply can't be answered without knowing what you would consider an increase in genetic information. We could spend months guessing what definition you are using and not get it right, it would expedite matters considerably if you just told us.TTFN,WK

I'm not sure if thisThe Green Tree of Life - Hyperbolic Treeis the sort of thing you are looking for, it is a hyperbolic phylogenetic tree, it doesn't give any timescale information though. The different nodes also offer links to the Tree of life website which is a fantastic resource if you are interested in phylogenies.TTFN,WK