Can DNA information increase w/o intelligence?

Originally posted by KellyJay
I'll tell you what, I'll read to get to the current portion of this and not
jump on a matter already settled, unless I think it really wasn't
settled well.
Kelly

You don't need to do that, though if you could it would be nice. I often post before finishing the thread. I didn't mean to give you a hard time for posting before finishing the thread; I more meant to inform you that there was more to this particular issue. Threads get long and no one should have to read through pages and pages of posts before they themselves post.

Originally posted by Coletti
Think of TOE as a vector with a clear direction- up - from bugs to people. For any genetic mutation (or series of mutations) to be evidence of TOE, it must point in the same direction. But so far, the mutations could be going in any direction, up down or sideways. Data is added and subtracted at random. Random mutations. Maybe our ancestors will be amoebas!

For all we know if this were true mutations take us both ways, that
we all could be winding down to simplier forms from much higher
ones. That would mean nothing found should be assumed to the
lifeform where something else came from, we wouldn't know what
sprang from what. The various evolutionary lines would be both
going from something more functionally complex to simplier at
the same time.
Kelly

Originally posted by aardvarkhome
The analogy is that a person who does not understand a television attributes its function to small intelligent beings who make it work and guide its function. Similarly a person becomes skeptical about creationism in the face of evidence but who does not understand the processes of evolution, leaves a role for god to guide the process.

I got that; however, my point which you seemed to have missed was
that we have all there is to have about the television before us, no
so with evolution. I can take you and show you the methods to design
and put together a CPU, from cradle to grave. You cannot do that with
either creation or evolution, as creation was an event that happened
X amount of years ago, and evolution seems to be a process that is
so slow no one can see, and have troubles defining it.
Kelly

Originally posted by AThousandYoung
TOE as a vector pointing from bugs to humans...humans did not evolve from the bugs that exist now by the TOE, but let's say a vector from the bugs we did evolve from (according to the TOE) to humans. That's a minor point.

However, here's a more major point - According to the TOE, cheetahs also evolved from the same bugs. However the vector you ...[text shortened]... successful at reproduction, and over time the accumulation of "up" mutations led to humanity.

Just so I know, when you say go "up" means what? If going sideways,
and down also give you something, what does going up mean'?
Kelly

Originally posted by AThousandYoung
[b]It is hard to define evolutionary progress - but it does assume progress.

No, it doesn't. It assumes changes over time limited by the process of natural selection. It does not label those changes 'progress' nor does it claim humans have 'progressed' farther than ameobas. These are not terms associated with the TOE.[/b]

If evolution took something like a human took it to an ameobas
would that be going down, or showing no progress but losing ground?
After all, the ameba is still a living system isn't it, since a cell isn't
all that simple?
Kelly

Originally posted by KellyJay
Just so I know, when you say go "up" means what? If going sideways,
and down also give you something, what does going up mean'?
Kelly

When I used the word 'up' in that post, I was responding to Coletti's post in which he defined 'up' as 'farther along the hypothesized evolutionary path which starts with the first form of life and results in humans' (paraphrased by me). It's not a term I would normally use in this context, and in fact it's among the group of words I've asked people to further clarify if they intend to use them.

Using this imagery, 'sideways' would mean changes which do not make the organism more or less human like. 'Down' would refer to changes that made the organism less human like. These are not rigorous terms and I won't defend their use for any rigorous purpose; I used them because I felt it would help Coletti and I understand one another better, not because I think they are useful terms.

Originally posted by KellyJay
If evolution took something like a human took it to an ameobas
would that be going down, or showing no progress but losing ground?
After all, the ameba is still a living system isn't it, since a cell isn't
all that simple?
Kelly

If evolutionary processes changed a human or human like organism to an ameoba over time, then by Coletti's imagery this would be 'downward' evolution, as the organism would be less human like. I don't know what you mean by 'progress' or 'losing ground'.

Originally posted by aardvarkhome
Why is evolution a movement toward complexity in your and Coletti's arguement? Its a red herring.

TOE is described by its detractors as progresive; from bugs to humans. That is only part of the story. Humans have evolved from Archaean bugs. Modern bugs have evolved from Archaean bugs. One thread involves and increase in 'complexity' (whatever we ...[text shortened]... ng evolution as an ascent is due to your arrogant assumption that you are the crown of creation.

It is functional complexity I have in mind. Becoming more functionally
complex would be adding new systems and organs that were not there
before. For example if evolution suggests that at one time on this
planet there were no creatures that had circulatory systems, new
information would have had to be added in the DNA for each creature
that later acquired a circulatory system or organ.

Some of the issues for the parts of the new circulatory system would
be, they would have to appear in such away that it didn’t kill off
whatever was acquiring the new system. The DNA would have to add
all the new body parts while maintaining the balance required that
each new part so it wouldn’t rob the original life form’s other parts of
necessary energy, fluids, or whatever else original life form’s system
required to live. This on top of getting everything to work together in
a healthy way without any intelligent direction or controls guiding the
process.
Kelly

Originally posted by AThousandYoung
If evolutionary processes changed a human or human like organism to an ameoba over time, then by Coletti's imagery this would be 'downward' evolution, as the organism would be less human like. I don't know what you mean by 'progress' or 'losing ground'.

Looking at functional completity, a human is more functionally
completx than a one cell life form. What a subject evolution is. 🙂
For direction up, down, side ways and so on, we need a base line
a point for perspective, or way or means to measure something.
Kelly

Originally posted by AThousandYoung
[b]I am hoping this was not accepted as information, it is more than just base pairs and the lengths that are involved.

So you're telling us what you think information is not. Can you contribute to what it is, or will you simply shoot down every proposed definition so that the claim can never be challenged (or supported)?

That definition w ...[text shortened]... haven't gotten that far, but 'complexity' is another word I feel is not sufficiently defined.[/b]

As I think of what is complex I'll use chess to describe it.
A pawn is less complex than a rook because of the possible choices
its use presents, a system or game of chess is much more complex
than say checkers, because of the posslbe choices each game gives
us while playing. Throwing in function with complex I look for what is
being done, the function.
Kelly

Originally posted by KellyJay
Looking at functional completity, a human is more functionally
completx than a one cell life form. What a subject evolution is. 🙂
For direction up, down, side ways and so on, we need a base line
a point for perspective, or way or means to measure something.
Kelly

Are you suggesting that a modern day one celled organism has no 'systems' that a human does not also have?

Originally posted by AThousandYoung
Are you suggesting that a modern day one celled organism has no 'systems' that a human does not also have?

You see the various systems in a human just like a single cell too?
They each have all the same parts doing the same thing, the same
way?
Kelly

Originally posted by KellyJay
You see the various systems in a human just like a single cell too?
They each have all the same parts doing the same thing, the same
way?
Kelly

er, yes. A multicellular organism is a collection of single cells. Each single cell has to process material in order to respire end excrete. These processes are comon to many organisms; the enzymes that control each of these processes in complex biochemical pathways are similar in different organisms; enzymes are gene products hence organisms have genes in common: not identical but similar and in many cases recognisable as coming from a common progenitor. At one level, the cytoplasmic DNA that controls some very basic cell functions has high levels of similarity between species with genic region being highly conserved but characteristic difference in intergenic regions that can be used to plot evolutionary pathways.

Originally posted by aardvarkhome
er, yes. A multicellular organism is a collection of single cells. Each single cell has to process material in order to respire end excrete. These processes are comon to many organisms; the enzymes that control each of these processes in complex biochemical pathways are similar in different organisms; enzymes are gene products hence organisms have gene ...[text shortened]... characteristic difference in intergenic regions that can be used to plot evolutionary pathways.

They just happen to be at the right place at the right time. 😉

Originally posted by Coletti
They just happen to be at the right place at the right time. 😉

The ones that mutate to loose a vital step in a biochemical pathway fall by the wayside.