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Author Topic:   No "new information" required
Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 285 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 16 of 20 (664671)
06-04-2012 12:08 AM
Reply to: Message 15 by foreveryoung
06-03-2012 11:26 PM


Re: No takers?
So by precision in language, you are hoping he is talking about a change in beak type among a population of birds over time? That would be evolution. A change to an individual bird over its lifetime is not evolution, I agree. Do you realize that many people are meaning the former when they speak in the latter way?
Of course I realize it --- that's why I said that although he'd written the latter I presumed that he meant the former.
But since there's also a chance that he meant what he said, I didn't want to take the chance and maintain that that would be an example of evolution, since it wouldn't.

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Wounded King
Member
Posts: 4149
From: Cincinnati, Ohio, USA
Joined: 04-09-2003


Message 17 of 20 (664688)
06-04-2012 7:41 AM
Reply to: Message 10 by gaxar77
06-03-2012 10:35 PM


Re: No takers?
The definition of information that they use, at least from what I have read, is the same definition given by information science.
Just to give one example to expand slightly upon what Dr. A said, Werner Gitt, who is associated with 'Answers in Genesis', has a definition of information that explicitly requires a mental origin. For a fuller discussion of Gitt's formulation see The value of Gitt information.
TTFN,
WK

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Replies to this message:
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Taq
Member
Posts: 9973
Joined: 03-06-2009
Member Rating: 5.7


(4)
Message 18 of 20 (664705)
06-04-2012 12:25 PM
Reply to: Message 10 by gaxar77
06-03-2012 10:35 PM


Re: No takers?
I don't see what you mean when you see that creationists define information deliberately so that it cannot be increased through random mutations. The definition of information that they use, at least from what I have read, is the same definition given by information science.
Actually, it isn't. They make up their own definitions, such as Complex Specified Information.
The changing of a bird's beak or wing-shape, to make it more apt at doing one thing may be beneficial, but it does not require any new information, and thus cannot be used as an example of evolution.
This is exactly what I am talking about. If this is not an example of new information then evolution does not need to produce new information in order to produce the biodiversity we see today.
The new information needed by evolution can only come by incremental steps, and there is no example whatsoever of any new information being added to DNA that benefits it.
That is exactly what you described with the bird's beak and wing, and yet you say that is not new information.
Even if you say that evolution does not require an increase in complexity, but can also be characterized by a decrease, that still doesn't explain how the increase occurs by means of that same evolution.
It occurs through mutation and selection. Whether or not creationists want to call this "new information" has little to do with the reality that evolution does occur.

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Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 285 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 19 of 20 (664711)
06-04-2012 1:07 PM
Reply to: Message 17 by Wounded King
06-04-2012 7:41 AM


Re: No takers?
Just to give one example to expand slightly upon what Dr. A said, Werner Gitt, who is associated with 'Answers in Genesis', has a definition of information that explicitly requires a mental origin. For a fuller discussion of Gitt's formulation see The value of Gitt information.
Or there's that chap we just had on these forums who insisted that information was the opposite of Shanon entropy ... in which case you can create new information by deleting chunks of the genome!

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ookuay
Junior Member (Idle past 3887 days)
Posts: 20
Joined: 01-24-2012


Message 20 of 20 (669845)
08-03-2012 10:53 PM
Reply to: Message 10 by gaxar77
06-03-2012 10:35 PM


Re: No takers?
You must have heard of the classic stories of pathogen and insect natural selection. Viruses like HIV attacked by white blood cells and medicines and insects that feed on plants sprayed with insecticide evolve to gain immunity in incremental steps. Simple variation allows some pathogens or insects to be better adapted every step of the way. The beginning population has mutations that turn out to be beneficial. It's circumstance that decides whether the resistance genes are beneficial.

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