The Problem with Christians

[Esquilax]

Information is an inherent property of DNA. In fact the information stored in DNA is enormous. It makes no difference that a third party is aware or unaware of it, that is irrelevant. The ability of the DNA to self diagnose a fault and to then apply a correction is certainly evidence of inherent information.

So show me an information. If you're going to assert that it's an objective quantity extant in DNA, then produce for me an information. You can't, though, because information isn't present in DNA- chemical interactions performing predictable actions are present in DNA- and is, in fact, a post hoc organization of predictable elements within DNA into a comprehensible form, as is all information. Oh, but also, just to really jam the nail into this coffin: no description of evolution anywhere that is accepted by mainstream science mentions information at all. They just mention changes in genomes among populations. This requirement that information be constantly added is an illusory one demanded by fiat by people like you with an ax to grind.

But we aren't talking about a small reversal in disorder when it comes to DNA. We are talking about going from nothing living to the human genetic code which is 3 billion bits long. This represents a massive reversal of disorder, against all odds.

Your extreme misrepresentation of entropy in the context you meant it has been dealt with elsewhere. I'm not going to rehash it: suffice to say that disorder is a factor in thermodynamic entropy, which evolution is exempted from by definition, and not within information system entropy, in which decreases in entropy are both expected and mundane. There is no sense in which you're correct here.

But this requires intelligent input doesn't it? In evolution, there is no intelligent input because that would indicate design, and we can't have that can we?

Fuck off with that passive aggressive shit. I'll entertain the design hypothesis the moment it's indicated, and "you can't explain that naturally!" is not an indication of design, just an indication of how willing you are to let your ignorance shape every one of your views in place of evidence. Entropy in information systems is a means of deriving calculations, it necessarily refers to our ability to predict outcomes, and so requires intelligent input. It's also completely irrelevant to every aspect of biology and I'm completely baffled as to why you brought it up at all. Were you just looking for reasons why evolution is false and didn't care enough to make sure you weren't mixing up word definitions?

I've no problem with isolated reversals in entropy, that isn't the problem. It is the scale of the reversals required for life that is the problem.

But the type of entropy you're talking about refers exclusively to how outcomes of varying events are predicted. It doesn't apply to evolution or biology at all. This is roughly akin to you saying my Nissan cannot be a car because elevator cars go up and down vertical shafts: they are two entirely unconnected types of car.

[Esquilax]

I don't see the relevance here. Small, localized reductions in entropy are not an issue. Massive reversals are. Pond slime to the human brain is gigantic, no mater how long it takes.

What is entropy, to you?

[robvalue]

Have we been presented with an example of a non-designed life form, for comparison? What would that be like?

Clearly a life form is already a system. Saying its a system that "was designed" adds no more useful information. If anything, it's a red herring, leading us to investigate motives of this apparent designer rather than just studying what we actually have. Studying it works perfectly well. What advantage is there imagining what a possible designer had in mind?

It seems obvious to me that the "designer" was already assumed before any "investigation" started, and so no conclusion has been made. If your religious beliefs insist that you believe in a designer, it's hardly an investigation at all, is it? If no example of non-designed life can be posited, then there was never any danger of a different conclusion ever being reached. It's a charade of confirmation bias.

[AJW333]

If DNA mutations are the result of copying errors, then we should see very few large-scale changes to the DNA.

... We do, in comparison to the literally countless numbers of small-scale changes that we see in nature, every single time a population reproduces. It's not my fault that you're unfamiliar with this.

And actually, wait: are you now disputing the mechanism behind mutations? I mean, granted, there are other mechanisms, like gene duplication, gene damage and so on, but the majority of mutations come about via transcription errors during reproduction- humans get at least sixty mutations during that time, for example, and given how evolutionary changes mainly occur over generations, it plays a large role there as well. Are you seriously suggesting something else, or just desperately scrabbling for another hole to poke?

I'm not arguing against the mechanisms behind DNA mutations. I am wondering how you change from one species into another when you only have small changes to existing DNA to choose from. I understand that you believe you just need lots of generations, but to create new proteins you need new code, which is why higher order animals like humans have so many more genes than simple organisms that we are supposed to have evolved from.

Millions of years and a correspondingly large number of generations? You are aware that most organisms reproduce way faster than even humans do, and human reproduction begins occurring after less than two decades for any given human, yes? Millions of years can easily generate trillions of generations for transcription errors to occur in, expanding exponentially as populations grow and diversify. This is another one of those cases where you're unjustifiably incredulous, but an actual understanding of the scale of what we're talking about renders your reaction utterly nonsensical.

No real point arguing with you on this. The chances of creating new, usable protein from random changes to the AA sequences is still way way beyond the trillions, it is in another dimension of implausibility, beyond 1:10^500. You don't accept this, so I will quit repeating it.

My figures of 1:10^500 to make a single human protein look even more remote given that the DNA is actively fighting against the formation of anything different to what is already extant. Add to this the problem that the majority of uncorrected mutations take information out of the DNA,

"By examining the homologous protein sequences, de Jong and Rydén (1981) observed that deletions of amino acids occurred about four times more frequently than insertions [5]. Deletion events also outnumbered insertions for processed pseudogenes [6-9]. Deletions are about twice as frequent as insertions for nuclear DNA, and in mitochondrial DNA, deletions occur at a slightly higher frequency than insertions [10]. Deletion events are also found more common than insertions in both mouse and rat [11-13]." http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2671719/

Information is irrelevant to this, and the DNA isn't "fighting" against anything. Do your research before you make statements.

Of course the DNA is fighting! It deliberately and intelligently corrects errors in AA sequencing.

And now we're going to play a nice game of "things you conveniently omitted from your citation," which I'm sure will be fun for everyone:

The paper is nine years old. It specifically refers to Mammalian genomes and, obviously, modern Mammals alone, and is thus not something you can extrapolate back into a truism for all of history. The sample size of 18 is not high, and thus further reason not to take this as true for all of biological history, let alone to make the absurdly overreaching claim that you did with it.  Actually reading the discussion of the results, instead of cherry picking a single paragraph of the introduction and going no further shows that the report's authors peg insertions and deletions both as sources of genomic divergence in evolution, meaning that they don't take their own results as evidence against evolution, but rather for it, which takes the wind completely out of your sails.

No dishonesty or slight of hand here. I took their stats on insertion and deletion and interpreted them as harmful to the cause of evolution. I ignored their claims that it was good for evolution because it makes no sense. Evolution requires that information is added to the DNA library and this isn't going to happen if the majority of mutations delete base pairs and AAs.

If you demand that a thing be directly observed before it can be considered a fact, and yet hold to a belief that you have never observed yourself and call it factual, then you are being unreasonable.

The complex interactions in nature and the human body are observed and are "factual." Because the chances of these advanced living systems evolving from non-life is ludicrous, I can consider their existence as proof of the existence of God.

What I asked was how the application of heat and cosmic rays, plus the occasional space rock add to the pool of information within the DNA. Any answers?

Yes: information is irrelevant. It is derived from DNA after examination, not during its origins and construction.

A very convenient answer. So I presume you believe that the earliest DNA didn't have any of the necessary proteins and enzymes to repair itself until some random mutations created them? That they are completely there as a result of pot luck and no design is present?

[AJW333]

Information is an inherent property of DNA. In fact the information stored in DNA is enormous. It makes no difference that a third party is aware or unaware of it, that is irrelevant. The ability of the DNA to self diagnose a fault and to then apply a correction is certainly evidence of inherent information.

So show me an information. If you're going to assert that it's an objective quantity extant in DNA, then produce for me an information. You can't, though, because information isn't present in DNA-

Science magazine and some Harvard scientists disagree with you,

"When it comes to storing information, hard drives don't hold a candle to DNA. Our genetic code packs billions of gigabytes into a single gram. A mere milligram of the molecule could encode the complete text of every book in the Library of Congress and have plenty of room to spare. All of this has been mostly theoretical—until now. In a new study, researchers stored an entire genetics textbook in less than a picogram of DNA—one trillionth of a gram—an advance that could revolutionize our ability to save data.............  DNA chips are now the storage medium with the highest known information density, the researchers report online today in Science. " http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2012/08/d...hard-drive

[Esquilax]

I'm not arguing against the mechanisms behind DNA mutations. I am wondering how you change from one species into another when you only have small changes to existing DNA to choose from. I understand that you believe you just need lots of generations, but to create new proteins you need new code, which is why higher order animals like humans have so many more genes than simple organisms that we are supposed to have evolved from.

Are you familiar with frame-shift mutations? Gene duplication? Insertions and deletions? All of these, in addition to regular mutations during transcription, fully account for the addition of new genes. Modern biologists fully understand this, and I'm wondering why you think that you know more about this than they do?

No real point arguing with you on this. The chances of creating new, usable protein from random changes to the AA sequences is still way way beyond the trillions, it is in another dimension of implausibility, beyond 1:10^500. You don't accept this, so I will quit repeating it.

So what are the odds of magic eternal god man? You're so hot on the odds when you think you can bend them to fit your presuppositions, but you refuse to even consider them when it comes to your sorcerous alternative. Double standards, much?

Of course the DNA is fighting! It deliberately and intelligently corrects errors in AA sequencing.

How did you determine that this was deliberate and intelligent, rather than just a mechanism that obviously, those organisms that survived would have, because the alternative would pose a significant risk of fatality? You're just slipping your conclusion in there without justifying it.

No dishonesty or slight of hand here. I took their stats on insertion and deletion and interpreted them as harmful to the cause of evolution. I ignored their claims that it was good for evolution because it makes no sense.

So, to be clear: where the report agrees with what you already believe, the information is viable and worth taking seriously. Where the report disagrees with what you already believe, it shouldn't be taken seriously. So the factor determining whether the information is good or not isn't the evidence or a thorough understanding of the subject by trained individuals, it's how much the conclusions being reached aligns with what you, personally, want to be true.

Do I have that about right?

Evolution requires that information is added to the DNA library and this isn't going to happen if the majority of mutations delete base pairs and AAs.

There is no description of evolution in any mainstream scientific source that has that requirement, nor talks about information in the sense that you're talking about at all. You are simply straight up wrong here.

The complex interactions in nature and the human body are observed and are "factual." Because the chances of these advanced living systems evolving from non-life is ludicrous, I can consider their existence as proof of the existence of God.

You don't really understand how evidence works, do you? That, and you're also deliberately ignoring anyone who tries to correct you on your misconceptions. Why should anyone take you seriously on this, considering those two facts?

A very convenient answer. So I presume you believe that the earliest DNA didn't have any of the necessary proteins and enzymes to repair itself until some random mutations created them? That they are completely there as a result of pot luck and no design is present?

I don't know. That's the honest answer to give when you don't have sufficient evidence; I'm not actually bound to accept your alternative merely because you keep proposing it and attempting to poke holes in the other. See, when you don't have any positive evidence for a claim- say, the god claim- then it doesn't matter how improbable you make a single competing conclusion, you aren't rationally justified in accepting the alternative based on nothing. If you have no positive evidence for evolution, then you still have no positive evidence for god: it's not a zero-sum game, here. You don't know, at that point.

I've explained all this to you before, as have several of my colleagues here. So I guess we can add basic epistemology to the list of things you're willfully ignorant of.

[Esquilax]

So show me an information. If you're going to assert that it's an objective quantity extant in DNA, then produce for me an information. You can't, though, because information isn't present in DNA-

Science magazine and some Harvard scientists disagree with you,

"When it comes to storing information, hard drives don't hold a candle to DNA. Our genetic code packs billions of gigabytes into a single gram. A mere milligram of the molecule could encode the complete text of every book in the Library of Congress and have plenty of room to spare. All of this has been mostly theoretical—until now. In a new study, researchers stored an entire genetics textbook in less than a picogram of DNA—one trillionth of a gram—an advance that could revolutionize our ability to save data.............  DNA chips are now the storage medium with the highest known information density, the researchers report online today in Science. " http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2012/08/d...hard-drive

Listen... if you're going to misunderstand what's being said to you this badly, there's little point in continuing. "Information" is not an objective quantity, it is a means of measuring conceptual quantities: it requires a mind to compile and decode it, but not a mind to instill it, not necessarily. As I've pointed out before, information can be derived from literally anything (the example I used was rocks, I believe) but that information merely refers to those definitional things about the rock that we can learn after the fact. My point has always been that, while DNA can contain information, that information is borne out through minds compiling the predictable chemical reactions that comprise DNA into a readable form, and not a literal ingredient in DNA.

My point is that you're misusing the term information, as you've misused a bunch of other important terms, not that the term itself doesn't have some important role to play in the study of biology.

[Angrboda]

Information is irrelevant to this, and the DNA isn't "fighting" against anything. Do your research before you make statements.

Of course the DNA is fighting! It deliberately and intelligently corrects errors in AA sequencing.

The DNA does no such thing. You are engaging in an anthropomorphism. The DNA is maintained by a system of chemical reactions. Those chemical reactions are prone to error known as mutations. The DNA isn't some kind of an ersatz agent in charge of its destiny. It is a part of a system that obeys the laws of physics, including inevitable errors which occur because the system isn't perfect.

[AJW333]

Intelligence has been defined in many different ways including one's capacity for logic, abstract thought, understanding, self-awareness, communication, learning, emotional knowledge, memory, planning, creativity and problem solving. It can be more generally described as the ability to perceive information, and retain it as knowledge to be applied towards adaptive behaviors within an environment. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligen...telligence

DNA has an ability to perceive information, eg that an error has occurred in the process of replication. It retains this knowledge through subsequent generations. It also uses this retained knowledge to make adaptive behaviours, ie to conduct very complex, multi-stage repair processes. How is it that this does not qualify as intelligent?

[LadyForCamus]

Intelligence has been defined in many different ways including one's capacity for logic, abstract thought, understanding, self-awareness, communication, learning, emotional knowledge, memory, planning, creativity and problem solving. It can be more generally described as the ability to perceive information, and retain it as knowledge to be applied towards adaptive behaviors within an environment. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligen...telligence

DNA has an ability to perceive information, eg that an error has occurred in the process of replication. It retains this knowledge through subsequent generations. It also uses this retained knowledge to make adaptive behaviours, ie to conduct very complex, multi-stage repair processes. How is it that this does not qualify as intelligent?

Can it do my homework for me? Jk...I'm not in school.

Boy...a designer intellectually capable of designing such complexity would have to be FAR more complex than any of the stuff he designed, right? So, I wonder who designed that designer? I mean...since complexity can't just emerge naturally. According to you.