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Posted on 06/05/2014 8:54:03 AM PDT by fishtank
Gene Complexity Eludes a Simple Definition
by Jeffrey Tomkins, Ph.D. *
In the early days of molecular genetics in the 1960s and ’70s, it was widely held that a gene could be defined as a single entity that encodes the information to make a protein. However, as genetic studies have progressed, our understanding of what defines a gene has become incredibly more complicated.1 We still hear evolutionists claim “this and that creature have the same genes and are therefore related through common descent in evolution,” but in light of recent genetic studies, this claim is grossly oversimplified.
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Hey, I’m a complicated guy.
I’m incapable of understanding how complexity disproves science? That we are constantly learning more and refining our understanding of how things work is part and parcel of scientific research. It is to be expected that as we discover new tools for observation, etc., we learn more details about what we are studying. Irreducible complexity seems to be a meme of young earth creationists. Are we supposed to say, “Gee, that’s too complicated for me, let’s take it on faith and stop trying to understand it”. I guess so.
These are your words Jim.
What this article suggests (once again) is that chance mutations are an insufficient explanation for the life we see around us - human life especially.
It seems obvious to me that as we "peel back the layers" and find ever increasing complexity, that the odds of "chance" explaining humanity grow to ridiculous proportions.
Does this negate science? No it makes "chance" look like silly grasping...
The mutation is the “random” chance, the selection is hardly random. All the increasing understanding of genetics does is give us the understanding that there are many more things subject to mutation than was previously thought. It makes evolutionary adaptation more likely rather than less.
For instance, some people have larger molar teeth than other people. If we all become vegetarians eating a great deal of raw veggies, the people with larger molars will have an advantage in making use of the new diet. Evolution will select for large molars and each generation will have fewer people with small molars. So it usually isn’t some huge difference like a third arm or some such that is the subject of evolution.
Drawin’s specific conclusions don’t really hold much relevancy today. His importance in more in the direction he pointed. He made a lot of incomplete observations where he was often correct in the trend but lacking in the, as yet, undiscovered details. He didn’t have any knowledge of the function of DNA which was technically discovered in 1869 but little understood until well into the 20th Century.
THis is a repost from this thread:
In sum, information needs an intelligence to create it. - Pretty interesting stuff to think about - but that’s metaphysical, too! Haha....
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3117912/posts
“Although Spetner says information could be in principle created or increased, Dr Werner Gitt, retired Director and Professor at the German Federal Institute of Physics and Technology, denies this:
“Theorem 23: There is no known natural law through which matter can give rise to information, neither is any physical process or material phenomenon known that can do this.”31
In his latest book, Gitt refines and explains his conclusions from a lifetime of research on information and its inseparable reliance on an intelligent source.32 There are various manifestations of information: for example, the spider’s web; the diffraction pattern of butterfly wings; development of embryos; and an organ-playing robot.33 He introduces the term ‘Universal Information’34 to minimize confusion with other usages of the word information:
“Universal Information (UI) is a symbolically encoded, abstractly represented message conveying the expected actions(s) and the intended purposes(s). In this context, ‘message’ is meant to include instructions for carrying out a specific task or eliciting a specific response [emphasis added].”35
Information must be encoded on a series of symbols which satisfy three Necessary Conditions (NC). These are conclusions, based on observation.
NC1: A set of abstract symbols is required.
NC2: The sequence of abstract symbols must be irregular.
NC3: The symbols must be presented in a recognizable form, such as rows, columns, circles, spirals and so on.
Gitt also concludes that UI is embedded in a five-level hierarchy with each level building upon the lower one:
statistics (signal, number of symbols)
cosyntics (set of symbols, grammar)
semantics (meaning)
pragmatics (action)
apobetics (purpose, result).
Gitt believes information is guided by immutable Scientific Laws of Information (SLIs).36,37 Unless shown to be wrong, they deny a naturalist origin for information, and they are:38
SLI-1: Information is a non-material entity.
SLI-2: A material entity cannot create a non-material entity.
SLI-3: UI cannot be created by purely random processes.
SLI-4: UI can only be created by an intelligent sender.
SLI-4a: A code system requires an intelligent sender.
SLI-4b: No new UI without an intelligent sender.
SLI-4c: All senders that create UI have a non-material component.
SLI-4d: Every UI transmission chain can be traced back to an original intelligent sender
SLI-4e: Allocating meanings to, and determining meanings from, sequences of symbols are intellectual processes.
SLI-5: The pragmatic attribute of UI requires a machine.
SLI-5a: UI and creative power are required for the design and construction of all machines.
SLI-5b: A functioning machine means that UI is affecting the material domain.
SLI-5c: Machines operate exclusively within the physical– chemical laws of matter.
SLI-5d: Machines cause matter to function in specific ways.
SLI-6: Existing UI is never increased over time by purely physical, chemical processes.”
“I’m incapable of understanding how complexity disproves science? “
Also, even though I disagree with your question, I would have written it like this:
“I’m incapable of understanding how (the creation of information) disproves (a simplistic materialistic unproven set of assumptions)?
I don’t think you used the word “science” correctly.
So if something is more complicated than you at first thought, it means that creationism is true?
Come on. Usually the first work in a field is simple, and approximate. Then (hopefully) there are improvements.
The whole creationist movement is a big embarrassment. It is also not particularly pious. It pretends to know what is unknowable, and totally distorts the meaning of the Bible.
The Bible is not a book about geology; it is not a treatise on biology. Is that not clear? It is about other things, on which one’s mind should be focused.
Hey, give us all a break.
Constant selection for higher sugar content reached a natural limit in the genetic code and nothing could be produced with higher sugar content. The genes had a hard coded limit, and nothing would go past that. When they removed the imperative for sugar producing, the beets went back very quickly to the genetic mid-point.
The genes are “designed” to keep the organism at a steady point and all of the evidence shows this to be true. Look up all the attempts to change the fruit fly through actual mutations, and within a couple of generations, the genes would “heal” the genetic mutation forced into the system.
I just finished reading two books “Signature in the cell” and “Darwin’s doubt “. I was mostly a believer in Darwin’s theory - no more.
You sound like me before reading those books. I think you would find them as much of an eye opener as I did.
Uh, the Bible is more complicated than you think too.
And mysterious, God’s way of humbling those who are boastful and proud. Try studying some prophecies [see Psalm 22 for example] written 800 years before Jesus Christ walked among us and also before crucifixion was invented.
Also please give us examples of your phoney claims about creationists. How does it distort the biblical meanings?
It may not be a geology book but it is a history book covering geneology from Adam to Jesus Christ AND it does provide specific dates when those in His Holy Lineage were born.
Metaphysics is a traditional branch of philosophy concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world that encompasses it, although the term is not easily defined. Wikipedia
Metaphysics is not science. It’s not derived through the scientific method. Metaphysics cannot tell me how or when the San Andreas fault formed or why it formed where it did. While the scientific method is an artificial construct and there is a philosophy of science, by itself, it doesn’t determine results but gives structure to how the results are structured, arrived at and validated. Frankly, metaphysics doesn’t interest me.
Even your Dr. Hamm acknowledges what he calls “microevolution” where mutations can change an organism is they give the organism better survivability. Bacteria become resistant to certain antibiotics over time. That is evolution. Science does not concern itself with macro evolution because it’s reached in the same manner as the resistant bacteria.
There are no “duckagators” half duck and half alligator. That’s a tired misrepresentation put up by creationist pseudo scientists to disprove evolution in the fossil record. There are, however, fossils of small dinosaurs with feathers, small dinosaurs that used their feathers to glide tree to tree, there are primitive birds with teeth and finally, fossils of many different kinds of birds existing at the same time as dinosaurs. That chain of fossils show the evolutionary path of birds, some of whom survived the mass extinction that killed off the other dinosaurs. That’s how transitional fossils work. Look it up in some other source than the creationist web sites that are more interested in making money off sincere Christians.
Microevolution is changes within a certain species, there is no change out of one specie to another. The better survivability which you speak of is the preexistence of the survival gene within the community, the poison kills off those without the genetic strain. Nothing new has actually been added, it has just been highlighted by the death of all the others. There is no mutation discovered anywhere which changes an organism into another organism.
I also noticed how you changed the subject to another one without really answering the first argument, and how you make ad hominum attacks. Also, he is not “my” Dr. Hamm, he is his own person and says what he wants to or believes in.
The fossil record is the most pathetic proof of anything to ever be foisted upon the public. The primitive birds you speak of were anything but primitive and had full operating bird characteristics such as avian lungs and breastbones. Using that type of chain of fossils is as stupid as the horse sequence where horses from different continents and time eras were put in a wholly imaginary sequence to “prove” their evolution. Keep believing what you want, but day after day, more scientists change from evolutionists to creationists as the real evidence piles against that belief.
You have no understanding of fossils or of evolution. The accumulated results of so called microevolution often leads over time to new species. Of course no one mutation leads to another species. That’s an absurd thing to look for and even more foolish to hold up as disproving evolution. Each fossil, at the time of its death was a complete and single individual within a species. Isolated groups of a species, say horses, accumulate changes to the point where they are quite different from horses in other locations that haven’t had contact with the isolated group. Eventually the isolated group can accumulate enough changes that they become a different species (ie. horses and zebras or burros).
Fossils are the preserved remains of once living creatures. Most dead plants and animals leave nothing so fossilization is rare. Lucy died in shallow, relatively still water where she was covered quite quickly by silt. Thus, some forty percent of her bones fossilized. She was quite luckily found as her fossil eroded out and before it was scattered and lost. The odds against such a chain of events occurring are obviously great.
The fossil record is no more complete than a book that has had over half it’s pages torn out and lost. Relationships within and among species can be seen in these fossils, however. As more fossils are found, more can be learned.
A great many bird fossils have been recently found in China. They were preserved in a great detail because, when the birds died, they fell in a shallow fresh water lake. The birds, their feathers and, in some cases, their internal organs were preserved because they sank into an anoxic lake bottom and were covered by silt without much decay. These fossils, covered millions of years and were all before the dinosaur mass extinction.
From these fossils, we have learned that there were a great many different species of ancient birds, only a few of which survived the mass extinction. Many species were quite different from any known bird after the extinction event. They had different skeletal structures than any bird today or any fossil bird found afterwards.
The species from which today’s birds are descended were water fowl who fed in shallows.
And yes, I do have understanding of fossils and evolution. The fact is that there has never been a fossil made which did not occur under rapid burial in anoxic conditions (excepting super rare amber style encapsulations) does not help your theory, but it does help the flood theorists. Especially the mass burials all over the world.
The mutation is the “random” chance
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