Can DNA information increase w/o intelligence?

Originally posted by AThousandYoung
Sorry about spamming this thread. It's just that this is showing exactly why this claim is one of my pet peeves. I heard the claim for the first time and I thought to myself - how do I check this out? But I can't. There is no way to check it out because it's worded so vaguely that people who really want it to be true can claim any evidence I com ...[text shortened]... To me it's a way of slick talking the ignorant into thinking ID must be true. This bothers me.

No problem.

Originally posted by AThousandYoung
Sorry about spamming this thread. It's just that this is showing exactly why this claim is one of my pet peeves. I heard the claim for the first time and I thought to myself - how do I check this out? But I can't. There is no way to check it out because it's worded so vaguely that people who really want it to be true can claim any evidence I com ...[text shortened]... To me it's a way of slick talking the ignorant into thinking ID must be true. This bothers me.

Just what does this say to you, that the claim cannot be shown?
It cannot or has not been shown so it must be true and therefore
the ID people are wrong?
Kelly

Originally posted by Coletti
I went back an checked the link you added (should have done that earlier) to see if I agreed with the "initial claim."

I guess we need to define an increase in informations so that the processes shows a clear mechanism that would take a life form from a simple celled creature to a complex creature (say from an amoeba to a cat). That means that unless ...[text shortened]... e details of genetic mutations are not clearly positive - there is no evidence of evolution.

Just wait a million or billion years, evolution will come up with
something new by then.
Kelly

Originally posted by Coletti
Well the mutation should be functional for it to be information, otherwise it's random junk. That's the key to evolutionary theory - things evolve - not just mutate. A mutation could go in any direction. If an increase of information is an indication of evolution - it needs to move in a positive direction. It needs to be useful.

My problem is I don ...[text shortened]... s things evolving instead of devolving. And how can we tell when a mutation really is positive.

There is evidence of point mutation having 'silenced a copy of a gene within evolutionary history and a subsequent mutation will given it new functionality. Please remember that genes code for enzymes and enzymes control life processes at a biochemical level. Each enzyme catalyses one step in a biochemical function. A change at one step will have a cascading effect down a metabolic pathway. A small effect at one stage can have immense effects elsewhere in a system. There are in excess of 100000 human genes. The probability of a point mutation in a gene is low, but the number of genes is high. On top of that you have to consider the rate of mutation in germ cells only along with the frequency of reproduction.

I'm not clever enough to do the maths but I hope your getting the feeling for the complexity. Bear in mind that plant genomes are more complex!

Originally posted by KellyJay
Just wait a million or billion years, evolution will come up with
something new by then.
Kelly

A man didn’t understand how televisions work, and was convinced that there must be lots of little men inside the box. manipulating images at high speed. An engineer explained to him about high frequency modulations of the electromagnetic spectrum, about transmitters and receivers, about amplifiers and cathode ray tubes, about scan lines moving across and down a phosphorescent screen. The man listened to the engineer with careful attention, nodding his head at every step of the argument. At the end he pronounced himself satisfied. He really did now understand how televisions work. "But I expect there are just a few little men in there, aren’t there?"

Originally posted by Coletti
I went back an checked the link you added (should have done that earlier) to see if I agreed with the "initial claim."

I guess we need to define an increase in informations so that the processes shows a clear mechanism that would tak ...[text shortened]... are not clearly positive - there is no evidence of evolution.

The purpose of this thread is to discuss the broad statement about genetic information - or even the broader one which makes a statement about information as a whole. This is not a thread in which I defend the whole theory of evolution.

People have made a definite claim that something is not possible. This claim involves 'intelligence' and 'information'. Evolution is not involved in the claim, though the claim is generally used to attack the TOE with the assumption that the claim is correct, and therefore the TOE cannot be correct. It's like this:

1) The TOE assumes information can be created without intelligent intervention.
2) Information cannot be created without intelligent information.
3) Therefore, the TOE is wrong.

I dispute the claim about information (#2), and I've given a reasonable example which shows that the claim is not true. This does not mean I need to give a detailed explanation and defense of the theory of evolution. That's not really relevant. It would shift this debate away from the topic and it would take a whole lot of time and effort on my part. I'd be put in the position of defending an entirely different claim. There's probably some fallacy that describes this situation, though I don't know what it is formally called.

Originally posted by KellyJay
Just what does this say to you, that the claim cannot be shown?
It cannot or has not been shown so it must be true and therefore
the ID people are wrong?
Kelly

Just what does this say to you, that the claim cannot be shown?
It cannot or has not been shown so it must be true and therefore
the ID people are wrong?

No. There is no evidence supporting the claim, so therefore there is no reason to believe the claim.

Originally posted by AThousandYoung
The purpose of this thread is to discuss the broad statement about genetic information - or even the broader one which makes a statement about information as a while. This is not a thread in which I defend the whole theory of evolution.

People have made a definite claim that something is not possible. This claim involves 'intelligence' and 'in ...[text shortened]... bly some fallacy that describes this situation, though I don't know what it is formally called.

If you do not define information in terms of TOE, you are not attacking the intended meaning of 2). You took it from an ID website. The whole point of the increase in information is in relation to the TOE.

Originally posted by Coletti
If you do not define information in terms of TOE, you are not attacking the intended meaning of 2). You took it from an ID website. The whole point of the increase in information is in relation to the TOE.

All right. Feel free to define 'information' in terms of the TOE. Then the claim (2) will mean something and I can investigate it to see if it's true or not.

Please note that my proposed definition of 'information' is highly relevant to the TOE, as single celled organisms have much shorter genomes and fewer genes than humans do.

Originally posted by AThousandYoung
All right. Feel free to define 'information' in terms of the TOE. Then the claim (2) will mean something and I can investigate it to see if it's true or not.

Please note that my proposed definition of 'information' is highly relevant to the TOE.

I did. An increase in information, for the purposes of TOE, must show evidence of evolution (not merely a mutation) - and should not evidence de-evolution. Evolution is the theory of the origins of life (or at least the development of life from lower to higher complex forms).

Originally posted by Coletti
I did. An increase in information, for the purposes of TOE, must show evidence of evolution (not merely a mutation) - and should not evidence de-evolution. Evolution is the theory of the origins of life (or at least the development of life from lower to higher complex forms).

What's the difference between evolution and de-evolution?

Originally posted by aardvarkhome
A man didn’t understand how televisions work, and was convinced that there must be lots of little men inside the box. manipulating images at high speed. An engineer explained to him about high frequency modulations of the electromagnetic spectrum, about transmitters and receivers, about amplifiers and cathode ray tubes, about scan lines moving across an ...[text shortened]... d how televisions work. "But I expect there are just a few little men in there, aren’t there?"

Did you have a point here? We can see a TV we do not see a new
heart, or something else new like an eye or something where they
were not there before. We simply see what we see, nothing new
under the sun.
Kelly

Originally posted by AThousandYoung
What's the difference between evolution and de-evolution?

A mutation that causes cancer would not be evolution.

A mutation that reduces the complexity of a life form would be de-evolution. (It removes evolutionary information.)

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!

Originally posted by Coletti
A mutation that causes cancer would not be evolution.

A mutation that reduces the complexity of a life form would be de-evolution. (It removes evolutionary information.)

Why?

If a mutation to a gene gives a reproductive advantage it will pass into future generations. It does not matter that the same mutation increases susceptibity to cancer in later life. The mutated gene will have entered the gene pool. This holds whether the mutated gene is responsible for both the reproductive advantage and the cancer or if the two genes are proximal on the chromosome.

Alzheimers is an inherited condition which reduces its victims to a shadow of their former being. I'd like to know what advantage comes packaged with thay gene.