The Theory of Evolution

[vicsinad]

This whole H2O example is irrelevant to the discussion of new genetic information and could, at best, be analogous to the rearranging of existing information. The fact that it is not new is admitted even by vicsinad who is forced to use inverted commas when referring to new.

The way vicsinad portrays it, its as if H2O can turn into living matter and "evolve" into a tiger. That is not going to happen because a) non-living matter cannot turn into living matter and b) for H20 (or anything else) to evolve, there would need to be a mechanism to generate new genetic information (which is clearly impossible), a mechanism to read that information, a mechanism to translate that information and a mechanism to reproduce that information. But that then introduces the problem of irreducible complexity, yet another gaping hole in the theory (or should I say hypothesis) of evolution.

Finally, the example is unable to explain where the H or O came from in the first place.

The H2O example is used to address several points. You're misconstruing the points of the example because, as I've stated multiple times, I believe you're using the phrase "new information" to represent several different things. I also believe you don't have even a general grasp of chemistry, which is necessary to have the discussion you want to have about genetics.

Like a gene, or an amino acid, H2O is comprised of, at its core, elements. If you're using "new information" to represent a new property or characteristic, different than any of the properties of H or O individually, then it is obvious that H2O has "new" properties and characteristics that neither H or O has individually. Similarly, as DNA is just elements, different combinations of chemicals will provide "new" properties and characteristics -- be it brown hair, six fingers, a wing, or three stomachs. When I explain that no new elements, or no new chemical information, is needed to create something with new properties and characteristics, you use this to say: "see, you admit that nothing new is made." You're confused as to what you mean by new information -- it then has become a meaningless dispute about semantics.

Next, you keep on suggesting, for some apparent reason you haven't yet made clear, that either a) evolution needs to explain how the elements on the periodic table came to be in order for evolution to be true; or that b) evolution seeks to explain where these elements came from. Neither of these are true. Just as physicists don't need to explain where gravity comes from to explain how it works, and chemists don't need to explain where the elements came from to explain chemistry, evolution doesn't need to explain where the elements came from.

Further, you're restricting your discussion to a very, very simplistic understanding of genetics: genes. You're not considering the very intricate and complicated chemical structure of the several different parts of a gene. If you expanded the discussion into this, you would hopefully see how all these new genes appear from the same information. You would see that to add a new digit or a wing or an internal organ, the same chemical information is used.

Finally, the line between life and non-life is really blurry. There is no clear line that distinguishes life from non-life. Sure: a deer is life and a rock isn't. But what about a virus? This is because, for the interacting elements and chemicals, they don't understand such classifications. They either interact with each other based on their properties or they don't because they can't. We humans just try to classify what we observe. When in reality, whatever is classified as life and non-life are really just the elements interacting. Remove yourself from your human perspective and try to see the world from an elemental perspective. It's hard, I know. But it helps put things in perspective.

I still maintain that your misunderstanding revolves around a combination of a) not knowing much about chemistry and b) not knowing, or not defining, or continually changing, what you mean by "information."

You want evolution to need new information on the elemental level in order for it to produce new information with regards to genotype and phenotype. But evolution does not need that. New information of one sort is brought about from the same old information of another sort.

[vicsinad]

I think that's as "dumbed-down" as it can get.

Call me an infidel,but I just can't see how entire humanity could come from a single male and a single female individual that magically came into existence at some point in history.

All that incest!

[Vangelovski]

The H2O example is used to address several points. You're misconstruing the points of the example because, as I've stated multiple times, I believe you're using the phrase "new information" to represent several different things. I also believe you don't have even a general grasp of chemistry, which is necessary to have the discussion you want to have about genetics.

Like a gene, or an amino acid, H2O is comprised of, at its core, elements. If you're using "new information" to represent a new property or characteristic, different than any of the properties of H or O individually, then it is obvious that H2O has "new" properties and characteristics that neither H or O has individually. Similarly, as DNA is just elements, different combinations of chemicals will provide "new" properties and characteristics -- be it brown hair, six fingers, a wing, or three stomachs. When I explain that no new elements, or no new chemical information, is needed to create something with new properties and characteristics, you use this to say: "see, you admit that nothing new is made." You're confused as to what you mean by new information -- it then has become a meaningless dispute about semantics.

Next, you keep on suggesting, for some apparent reason you haven't yet made clear, that either a) evolution needs to explain how the elements on the periodic table came to be in order for evolution to be true; or that b) evolution seeks to explain where these elements came from. Neither of these are true. Just as physicists don't need to explain where gravity comes from to explain how it works, and chemists don't need to explain where the elements came from to explain chemistry, evolution doesn't need to explain where the elements came from.

Further, you're restricting your discussion to a very, very simplistic understanding of genetics: genes. You're not considering the very intricate and complicated chemical structure of the several different parts of a gene. If you expanded the discussion into this, you would hopefully see how all these new genes appear from the same information. You would see that to add a new digit or a wing or an internal organ, the same chemical information is used.

Finally, the line between life and non-life is really blurry. There is no clear line that distinguishes life from non-life. Sure: a deer is life and a rock isn't. But what about a virus? This is because, for the interacting elements and chemicals, they don't understand such classifications. They either interact with each other based on their properties or they don't because they can't. We humans just try to classify what we observe. When in reality, whatever is classified as life and non-life are really just the elements interacting. Remove yourself from your human perspective and try to see the world from an elemental perspective. It's hard, I know. But it helps put things in perspective.

I still maintain that your misunderstanding revolves around a combination of a) not knowing much about chemistry and b) not knowing, or not defining, or continually changing, what you mean by "information."

You want evolution to need new information on the elemental level in order for it to produce new information with regards to genotype and phenotype. But evolution does not need that. New information of one sort is brought about from the same old information of another sort.

I've mentioned what I mean by information a number of times now so I won't re-post it again. Your statements above are just misconstruing my argument and continuing to deny what every evolutionist I know of claims to date - that new information is needed to go from a one-celled organism to every living thing on the planet. I'll just re-post my summary in response to your same old claim:

Maybe vicsinad is just a bad representation of what evolutionists believe, but if he didn't worm around so much, it would become blindingly obvious that evolution has massive gaping holes and is built on assumptions (origin of life, "original" information) that we are told not to question, just accept. Evolutionists teach that one-celled organisms (e.g. protozoa) have given rise to pelicans, pomegranates, people and ponies. In each case, the DNA ‘recipe’ has had to undergo a massive net increase of information during the alleged millions of years. A one-celled organism does not have the instructions for how to manufacture eyes, ears, blood, skin, hooves, brains, etc. which ponies need. So for protozoa to have given rise to ponies, there would have to be some mechanism that gives rise to new information, but all we observe is sorting and, overwhelmingly, loss of information. If anything, the journey of information is going in the opposite direction to what is required for evolution to be true.

[Vangelovski]

Victor, here's your chance to win $1 million dollars:

http://us.net/life/

They were/are offering a $1 million prize to anyone providing a chemically plausible naturalistic solution for the origin of the genetic code and life. The latest announcement reads:

On October 26, 2013 the Governing Board of the Origin of Life Science Foundation, Inc. voted to put on hold the Origin of Life Prize Program, and to temporarily suspend the Origin of Life Prize offer. Over the 13 years since The Origin of Life Prize was first announced in NATURE and SCIENCE, no submission has ever made it past the screening judges to higher-level judges. No submission has ever addressed, let alone answered, any of the questions below, for which the Prize offer was instituted. Most of these Prize-offer questions centered on: "How did inanimate, prebiotic nature prescribe or program the first genome?"

Life origin literature continues to circumvent and ignore this problem, if not deliberately sweep it under the rug. The Prize Program did much to raise consciousness and stimulate more consideration of the real problem of life origin - Prescription of future biofunction that was not yet selectable by the environment.

And no, this is not a Christian organisation - its a naturalist organisation seeking a natural explanation to the origin of life. Seeing as you are our resident chemical expert, I thought you'd be able to make a quick million...

[spitfire]

I'm listening to an internet radio station just now. The music is in zeros and ones streaming, it goes through the internal digital to analog converter and from there amplified to the speakers.

Cool. I just witnessed reconstruction of information. Now I wonder what would happen if I push the bass a little bit. It will make new information based on different combinations of ones and zeros.

I'm God!

[Vangelovski]

I'm listening to an internet radio station just now. The music is in zeros and ones streaming, it goes through the internal digital to analog converter and from there amplified to the speakers.

Cool. I just witnessed reconstruction of information. Now I wonder what would happen if I push the bass a little bit. It will make new information based on different combinations of ones and zeros.

I'm God!

Why don't you submit your ideas to the organisation I noted in the post immediately above your post?

[spitfire]

Why don't you submit your ideas to the organisation I noted in the post immediately above your post?

They ask for an explanation of much more complicated data than the Nyquist–Shannon sampling theorem.

[Vangelovski]

They ask for an explanation of much more complicated data than the Nyquist–Shannon sampling theorem.

That's probably because the Nyquist–Shannon sampling theorem has nothing to do with evolution. But seeing as you think you know what you're talking about, here's an easy $1 million.

[spitfire]

That's probably because the Nyquist–Shannon sampling theorem has nothing to do with evolution. But seeing as you think you know what you're talking about, here's an easy $1 million.

It's not an easy $1 million because it requires a hell of a lot of information.

That theorem made it possible to reconstruct music from the digital domain back into the analog.

[vicsinad]

Victor, here's your chance to win $1 million dollars:

http://us.net/life/

They were/are offering a $1 million prize to anyone providing a chemically plausible naturalistic solution for the origin of the genetic code and life. The latest announcement reads:



And no, this is not a Christian organisation - its a naturalist organisation seeking a natural explanation to the origin of life. Seeing as you are our resident chemical expert, I thought you'd be able to make a quick million...

Again, I don't know how many times I have to say it:

The process of evolution does not need to know the origins in order for it to be fact. Evolution is concerned with how life changes, not how the original rna/dna/singular cellular molecule came to be.

[Vangelovski]

Again, I don't know how many times I have to say it:

The process of evolution does not need to know the origins in order for it to be fact. Evolution is concerned with how life changes, not how the original rna/dna/singular cellular molecule came to be.

I know that many (not all) evolutionists claim that they don't need to explain the origin of life for evolution to be true. But that is just an attempt to make evolutionary theory seem more plausible by slight of hand. You want us to take origin of life and initial information as a given, on faith.

That is like saying that you will build a house of cards in mid air and claiming you don't have to explain how they will float or where the cards came from to begin with if you can explain how they might (theoretically) be fit together. The problem with this is that cards don't float in mid air - they need a base. Evolution cannot be divorced from its foundation - origin of life. Its a distraction device to take attention away from the elephant in the room.

[spitfire]

Mount improbable?

From primeval simplicity to ultimate complexity. The design hypothesis couldn't even begin to do that because it raises an even bigger problem than it solves; who made the designer?

[Vangelovski]

Mount improbable?

From primeval simplicity to ultimate complexity. The design hypothesis couldn't even begin to do that because it raises an even bigger problem than it solves; who made the designer?

Theism doesn't have the problem of answering 'who made the designer' because by definition the designer is eternal and unmade. Evolution claims to have a beginning but does not want to explain that beginning.

[spitfire]

Theism doesn't have the problem of answering 'who made the designer' because by definition the designer is eternal and unmade. Evolution claims to have a beginning but does not want to explain that beginning.

Theism can't explain a beginning yet it asks evolution to do that? Evolution doesn't claim a beginning, it claims evolution.
If you want answers about the beginning, which you don't since you accept no beginning in Theism, then you need a different science or sciences combined.

[vicsinad]

Theism can't explain a beginning yet it asks evolution to do that? Evolution doesn't claim a beginning, it claims evolution.

This is essentially it: evolution claims that life changes.

Sure, many evolutionists (just like many people) have ideas on how life and how the universe originated. Yet, the origins do not need to be explained to understand what we observe in the world.

Going back to H2O: chemists don't need to know where H came from and where O came from to understand how two H's and one O come together to make water. The same works for evolution.

Vangelovski:

Do chemists need to know where the elements on the Periodic Table originated from in order for them to understand chemistry? If so, are you saying that chemistry is not true? If not, then why do you hold different standards for elements/chemicals with regards to genetics and evolution?