Evolution and Information Theory

[Mr Skeptic]

Actually, the guy is worse than most. Most are just honestly deluded. This guy stole a Phd's name and picture, and figured we wouldn't notice. One of our mods, mooeypoo, noticed that the real Dr. Sullivan was fighting, not supporting, creationism. A little inquiry and we found the real one. I suggested making a note that we had an impostor, so as not to confuse later visitors, and Cap'n Refsmmat added the Fake to his name.

 

As to the effectiveness of Creation science, as a young scientist I was tricked by them for about a decade. I had excellent grades in the various sciences, top student, etc., even if not officially a scientist. Anyhow, when I eventually found out how much we really do know about the genome and its evolutionary history, then I changed my mind. However, it took me a very long time, especially since I read a lot of the material at A.I.G. I must say, the major problem is that proponents of evolution usually give as evidence stuff that is also consistent with common design, as opposed to only evolution.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

Indeed. When I saw a picture and a name, I decided to look up who this person really was, and when mooeypoo noticed that his publications were all in evolutionary biology journals, well...

 

My only regret is that I banned Fake Dr. Sullivan before I had a chance to see what his reaction to being found out was.

[Moontanman]

I'm keeping watch on another forum but so far no fake doctors have popped up. He smelled bad to me from he start as well, i look up everyone when i debate them, his on line persona was easier than most to confirm due to his photo but it also made him easier to fake realistically. It is really sad the creationists are willing to lie cheat and steal to convert people to their point of view but not surprising considering what I've seen out of the religious in my life.

[Sisyphus]

Information Theory, like a lot of other Creationist 'Science', is just a bugaboo to try and fool the nonscience-oriented public that Evolution is a political issue that is not well understood or well documented.

 

Information theory is not a sham. It just happens to be one of the more recent talking points of creationists, who use discredited ideas in information theory and misapply them to genetics, to make it seem legitimate and intimidatingly technical. If, like I did, you actually parse what is being said and take the time to research the references, you'll see that it's all just bullshit circular logic.

 

Still, any mention of "information theory," especially in biology, should be a red flag from now on.

[StrontiDog]

Information theory is not a sham. It just happens to be one of the more recent talking points of creationists, who use discredited ideas in information theory and misapply them to genetics, to make it seem legitimate and intimidatingly technical. If, like I did, you actually parse what is being said and take the time to research the references, you'll see that it's all just bullshit circular logic.

 

Still, any mention of "information theory," especially in biology, should be a red flag from now on.

 

I didn't mean to say Information Theory was sham, but it looks as if I have done so.

 

It seems a useful tool in some applications. But some of the claims like for evolution to be real, information must be increasing, is just plain silly. I remember reading about a species of fern with over six hundred pairs of chromosomes.

 

Why, that must be the most advanced and most evolved species on the planet, then.

 

Silliness, but it's not fair to refute his statements when he's not here to defend himself.

 

But then again, life ain't fair, is it?

 

Bill Wolfe

[Sisyphus]

They would just argue that that fern's genome isn't information, by arbitrary proclamation.

[Phi for All]

My only regret is that I banned Fake Dr. Sullivan before I had a chance to see what his reaction to being found out was.

He pretty much clammed up when mooeypoo mentioned she had read one of his papers supporting evolution. He knew then his "credentials" were in a paper bag that had been set on fire. But you're right, it would have been nice to watch him try to stomp it out.

[GenesForLife]

The thing with ERV's (Endogenous retroviruses) being evidence for common ancestry has a lot to do with the occurence of the same ERV's at the same characteristic genomic sites in both Chimpanzees and humans, the null hypothesis being that such ERVs could occur by the separate integration of the same retroviruses in both chimps and humans, but since this is extremely improbable, the only other possibility for explaining the aforementioned statistic is common ancestry, that is how it works.

 

TalkOrigins have a section on this, and a lot more literature on the topic can be accessed using Pubmed.

 

Coming to Mr.Skeptic's comment about how the same evidence could be used for common design, papers such as this http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20345981

illustrate that any use of genes that would specifically cause disease would automatically indicate that the designer, if there was one, would be quite unintelligent, thus leaving evolution as the only explanatory candidate.

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Coming to the information canard that keeps being trotted out with astounding regularity, it never really gets defined properly, does it?

 

Also, examples of de novo gene creation (new information) are here at http://www.ploscompbiol.org/article/info:doi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pcbi.1000734

 

and

 

http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0000096

 

You may also want to read about copy number variations.