Population Bottleneck

[rossum]

Unfortunately, although nucleotide sequences can be measured, the genetic information they contain is not susceptible to the same kind of measurement.

Both Shannon and Kolmogorov informaiton can be measured. Obviously you are using a different measure. You will have to give us an objective way to measure this ‘rom-information’.

On the other hand, if a new pair of wings suddenly appears in an organism that already has wings, such as the fruit fly Drosophila, then we can’t say that new genetic information is gained because the fruit fly already has that information.

So, none of your posts contain any new information because all the words you use already exist in the dictionary, you are merely copying words that are already present.

Duplication can give new information. One of the ways weeds resist the Roundup herbicide is duplication of the gene for the protein that Roundup blocks. Some plants have over 100 copies of that specific gene, so even after being dosed with Roundup the plant survives because it is producing so much more of that protein.

The bad news for evolutionists is that no evidence of new genetic information is being detected in all the evidences that they have so far gathered.

False. The Marbled crayfish has new information, it can reproduce parthenogenically, which its ancestor species cannot do. That is an observed example of a new function not previously present.

And beside that, there are many examples of gain in Shannon and Kolmogorov information. I await your published results on ‘rom-information’ loss and gain.

Science already has well established measures of information. If you want to introduce a new measure, then you have a lot of work to do to produce an objective and workable definition.

rossum

 

[Aloysium]

existing genomes inside each organism also have a built-in ability to mutate in response to environmental changes

Clearly there are mutations that do happen to the DNA in individual cells, but it would be impossible that the same change happens everywhere in the body. What does change is the expression of the genome.

There are epigenetic factors that control how and which areas of the DNA are turned on or off. The NASA twin study demonstrated the significant alterations that occurred when Scott Kelly spent a year on the ISS. While identical twins are not 100% identical in their DNA because of the variations that occur during their development, they are close enough to offer a comparison. It is the expression of the genome that determines the appearance of the phenotype, and this is clearly influenced by environmental factors.

It would be safe to say that those changes would occur especially in spermatozoa, which are continuously being produced, if not so much in the ova, which are all present at birth. This is where the environment would impact on future generations. Again, this is all built into the process of procreation.

There was a study that would take me a while to rediscover, where over successive generations, a population of “stupid” mice was bred. These were divided into two groups, one of them exposed to an enriched environment and the other, just their cages. It was found the the enriched group performed better on later testing. Interestingly, their offspring did also, in spite of their not having been exposed to that same enriched environment.

As our understanding of how genetics works grows, it is becoming abundantly clear that beyond the complexity of the organism within its environment, and that of organisms as whole beings in themselves, an environment of integrated specialized cells, that these cells are in turn exceedingly sophisticated environments in themselves. Life is able to procreate through, for all intents and purposes, infinitely complex interrelated processes which span different levels of order, from those of the macrocosm of the creature’s environment to the molecular activity of the cell where the DNA stores all the information needed by epigenetic processes to develop the form an adult living being able to procreate.

Even if one is blind to beauty and the reality of things as they exist as a unity, integrated into larger systems, surely the wondrous, infinitely complex nature of living forms will point one to God.

 

[rossum]

Your description of natural selection is beginning to sound like a description of an Intelligent Designer. It knows the genomes of various organisms and knows how to match them with the information in the environment! Is natural selection nothing but the Intelligent Designer in disguise? Also, you did not describe how an external information gets copied into genomes. You simply used the magic mantra “over time.”

Natural selection, somewhat simplified, boils down to “have more grandchildren than average”. Grandchildren mean that you are having children and that those children are fertile and reaching maturity.

Do you think that a white furred predator in the Arctic will find it easier to sneak up on prey than a black furred predator? Will a white furred prey animal be easier or more difficult for a predator to spot? Will white fur or black fur tend to increase the number of grandchildren?

Having more grandchildren spreads more copies of your genes into future generations.

rossum

 

[Techno2000]

rom:

Your description of natural selection is beginning to sound like a description of an Intelligent Designer. It knows the genomes of various organisms and knows how to match them with the information in the environment! Is natural selection nothing but the Intelligent Designer in disguise? Also, you did not describe how an external information gets copied into genomes. You simply used the magic mantra “over time.”

Natural selection, somewhat simplified, boils down to “have more grandchildren than average”. Grandchildren mean that you are having children and that those children are fertile and reaching maturity.

Do you think that a white furred predator in the Arctic will find it easier to sneak up on prey than a black furred predator? Will a white furred prey animal be easier or more difficult for a predator to spot? Will white fur or black fur tend to increase the number of grandchildren?

Having more grandchildren spreads more copies of your genes into future generations.

rossum

Way too simplified…

 

[rom]

There are epigenetic factors that control how and which areas of the DNA are turned on or off.

Great post! The entire post is great. The information in the DNA is more than we can see from the phenotype. That is why there can be many variations in the same species. The variations include adaptations to different environments. Yes, this points to the awesome power of God, who is not limited to making static DNAs and genomes, but which has power that can be turned on and off by epigenetic factors.

Evolution creates things that are similar, but different , like fingerprints, is that so difficult to understand?

Evolution does not create anything. It is not the cause, but the effect to be explained.

Both Shannon and Kolmogorov informaiton can be measured. Obviously you are using a different measure. You will have to give us an objective way to measure this ‘rom-information’.

The Shannon and Kolmogorov mathematical procedures measure the size and complexity of sequences of letters, but not the information conveyed by those letters and sequences. You are obviously using the wrong procedure for measuring biological information. Biological information is the “meaning” of DNA and RNA sequences, and it cannot be measured by mathematics.

So, none of your posts contain any new information because all the words you use already exist in the dictionary, you are merely copying words that are already present.

On the contrary, my posts give different information each time because the same dictionary words are used differently. For example, these two sentences, “Two men ran three miles” and “Three men ran two miles,” used exactly the same words that are found in the dictionary, but they gave different information. On the other hand, “Three miles ran two men” doesn’t make any sense and doesn’t give any information at all. When trying to understand biological information, the use of common sense is better than mathematical sophistication. The three example sentences I gave might get the same Shannon and Kolmogorov numbers, but they have different informational content. DNA and RNA coded sequences use the same letters – (A,T,C,G) for DNA and (A,U,C,G) for RNA – but the biological processes they produce can be very different. And the nature and complexity of these biological processes, which are most important for evolution, are exactly what the Shannon and Kolmogorov numbers cannot capture!!!

Duplication can give new information. One of the ways weeds resist the Roundup herbicide is duplication of the gene for the protein that Roundup blocks.

Wrong! Duplication can make more copies of the same information, but does not give more information. The Roundup herbicide does not kill all the weeds, not because the weeds are more resistant, but because they are too many. The solution: buy more cans of Roundup to kill more weeds.

 

[rom]

The Marbled crayfish has new information, it can reproduce parthenogenically, which its ancestor species cannot do.

Not so fast. There is no certainty that the marbled crayfish’s ability to reproduce asexually is new information. This ability could already be in its genome as a dormant gene, and was simply turned on as a response to the environment to which it was exposed. This is not something new. Two years ago there was also a report of a zebra shark, Stegostoma fasciatum, which had been producing offspring sexually. But when she was separated from her male partner and placed in a different aquarium, she switched to asexual reproduction and laid eggs! See Switch from sexual to parthenogenetic reproduction in a zebra shark, Jan. 2017.

For hundreds of millions of years organisms had been reproducing asexually. Sexual reproduction came later, but asexual reproduction did not cease to exist. Many organisms today still reproduce asexually. Most vertebrates reproduce sexually, but there are a few that still reproduce asexually. It is apparent that even in vertebrates that normally reproduce sexually, the old ability to reproduce asexually lie dormant in their genes, and can be turned on by epigenetic factors. There are documented cases of organisms switching from asexual to sexual, or from sexual to asexual, reproduction. Believe it or not, the switch from sexual to asexual reproduction has been observed even in turkeys! See Turkeys and Parthogenesis.

Therefore, one may not conclude, from the mere fact that the marbled crayfish is now reproducing asexually when it was previously reproducing sexually, that this is a solid evidence for the rise of new information and evolution. You need to find a better evidence than this.

Do you think that a white furred predator in the Arctic will find it easier to sneak up on prey than a black furred predator?

No, I do not deny that. What I deny is the assumption that there is a non-genetic information, such as “white things are difficult to see against a snowy or icy background,” existing as an entity in the environment. There is ZERO evidence that such a non-genetic information exists. If it does exist, where does it exist? In the snow? In the air? Even non-genetic information, if it really exists, must exist as a sequence in a physical medium that can be decoded. We are not aware of any physical substrate for your imagined non-genetic information in the environment.

Besides, your response completely evaded the issue I raised against your “natural selection.” You described it like an Intelligent Designer in disguise. Natural selection may not be random, but it is blind and ignorant. How can it match the genomes with information in the environment? Did you attempt to answer that? True, organisms can benefit from natural selection by having many grandchildren. But the benefit only comes when the organisms have already adapted to the environment, not before.

 

[FredBloggs]

For your information, it was Charles Darwin himself who used that argument. You can find it in his book, The Origin of Species , Ch. XIV. Begin reading at the last paragraph of p. 338 in the link provided. (Just click on the page or on the edge of the page to turn the page.)

Again, this is a straw man. Nobody (other than theists, it seems) claims that Origin represents the entirety of the Theory of Evolution as we understand it today. Darwin’s central argument - that of common descent - has been proven to be right, but the details of the mechanisms involved were either incomplete or just wrong. Darwin didn’t have the scientific tools available to him that we have today.

So claiming that “Darwin said it, therefore that’s what I’ll refute” is, as they say, not even wrong.

The drawings were made by Prof. Ernst Haeckel, who deliberately tweaked the drawings to make the embryos look alike in the early stages. The fraud was exposed just a few months after he published his book.

As far as I know the same evidence is still being used today. See this link, for example.

Erm, that’s from an IDC website. They’re claiming that it’s still being used, because it’s easy to argue the errors in that hypothesis and claim the whole Theory is wrong. A disingenuous, but all-too-common tactic.

It is not a straw man that I just made up.

No, you didn’t just make it up. But is is a straw man.

But if you have evidence from embryology that is different from what I presented, this is your opportunity to present it now and I will be happy to review it.

Based on what I’ve read from you in this thread, I genuinely don’t think it’s worth my time. You can claim that as a tap on the canvas if that floats your boat.

 

[rossum]

Biological information is the “meaning” of DNA and RNA sequences, and it cannot be measured by mathematics.

If you cannot measure something then you cannot say if it is increasing, decreasing or staying unchanged. Without a measure of “meaning” you have no objective basis to say that evolutionary processes cannot increase “meaning” in DNA. You have just destroyed a large part of the argument for Intelligent Design.

For example, these two sentences, “Two men ran three miles” and “Three men ran two miles,” used exactly the same words that are found in the dictionary, but they gave different information.

They contain exactly the same amount of mathematical information. Their meaning is different, but that meaning is a subjective measure. How much meaning is there in this text?

gtam gzhi dang, nges par 'byung bcas gzhi dang bcas,
gang dag zag bcas nyer len pa’i, phung po’ang de dag 'thab bcas kyang,
sdug bsngal kun 'byung 'jig rten dang, lta gnas srid pa’ang de dag yin,

Meaning is a subjective thing, not objective. Someone who spoke Tibetan, but not English, would see more meaning in that verse than in your two short examples.

Duplication can make more copies of the same information, but does not give more information.

So, if you write three checks for $100 you are not doing anything different from writing one check. Next time you owe me $100; I’ll expect three separate checks instead of one.

For Roundup resistance read: How to Make a Superweed with particular reference to Palmer Amaranth.

rossum

 

[Aloysium]

Evolution does not create anything. It is not the cause, but the effect to be explained.

Evolution rests on two pillars, that of random mutations and natural selection, under the assumption that creation does not occur, but that there are only transformations of what is. It is clearly grounded in this world, a modern biological version of the Ptolemaic system that sees the earth as the centre. As we do when we switch our perspective and imagine the sun, not rising and setting but rather at the axis around which we and other planets revolve, putting God at the Centre from which all creation is brought forth, it all makes sense, the physical, the psychological and the spiritual.

While creation still occurs with the birth of each new person, not to mention the very existence of everything in its moment from eternity, all is a manifestation of a kind of thing that had a beginning in time.

We are all expressions of one humanity, fallen in Adam, broken within and among ourselves, and united as one holy body in Jesus Christ, individual and made whole in love, separated by sin. From the creation of Eden, where God’s creation appropriated His position at the heart of its being, the entire universe, we being the laws of nature in human form, journeys through Jesus towards communion in the Trinity, to share in His glory.

So called random mutations responsible for the diversity seen in different kinds of organisms - grasses, simians, dogs and so on, are not random at all, but are variations possible because of built in mechanisms. These were created, to play out their potential over time. Random activity at a chemical level does occur as a result of such factors as radiation, toxins and viruses, as well as the noise that exists in every system, where nothing is 100% efficient. These random physical events, determined solely by the properties of matter, are disruptive to the information-in-action that is the genome. They are chaotic to the order that forms each creature as itself.

Natural selection is the shadow of the fact that each individual living being is also an element in its environment which it sustains and is sustained by. Ultimately, it is what happens to what does not fit.

In both cases, random mutation of DNA and natural selection are expressions of death. While clearly describing this world, where from the time we are born, we begin to die, they cannot explain creation, the beginnings of this world with all its natural wonders, all which point to the glory of God.

 

[Aloysium]

I genuinely don’t think it’s worth my time

Stick around. Listen and think about what you hear; you may learn something. I did.

 

[buffalo]

that of common descent - has been proven to be right,

Everyone already knew about common descent before Darwin. Common descent is nothing new. It is obvious. Universal common descent is the issue.

 

[buffalo]

So, if you write three checks for $100 you are not doing anything different from writing one check. Next time you owe me $100; I’ll expect three separate checks instead of one.

If I send you copies made on a copy machine, it is a matter of time where you will not be able to read the check and object.

 

[rom]

Based on what I’ve read from you in this thread, I genuinely don’t think it’s worth my time.

You don’t have to spend your time if you don’t want to. I won’t cry.

Meaning is a subjective thing, not objective.

Rossum, you and I have already had the chance to present our views adequately. So, let’s just agree to disagree. I don’t plan to debate this issue forever.

O, yes, if I owe you $100 and you insist that I give you three separate checks instead of one, then I’ll give you three checks worth $33.33, $33.33, and $33.34. There are things I can’t figure out with math, but that one I can.

 

[Hope1960]

Ask them to show you the hammered metal dome in the sky. It’s in Genesis, gottta be there somewhere.
Maybe this church is not for you?

The student pastor told me that it could be understood as the ozone layer but, “either way, it doesn’t really matter” and they “don’t teach on things like that. We are concerned about salvation issues and that’s not one of them.”

 

[Aloysium]

If I look out into the sky, I “see” Hubble images. If I try real hard, and switch gears on my imagination, there it is as clear as day, or night for that matter, a dome stretching from one horizon to the other, which ever way I turn. Imagine that. God created it all, even the dreams that arise from my twenty-first century relationship with the cosmos.