Bullshit. it’s at this point that you need schooling on the true nature of information.
The infamous canards surrounding “information”.
Now this is a particularly insidious brand of canard, because it relies upon the fact that the topic of information, and its rigorous analysis, is replete with misunderstanding. However, instead of seeking to clarify the misconceptions, creationist canards about information perpetuate those misconceptions for duplicitous apologetic purposes. A classic one being the misuse of the extant rigorous treatments of information, and the misapplication of different information treatments to different situations, either through ignorance, or wilful mendacity. For example, Claude Shannon provided a rigorous treatment of information, but a treatment that was strictly applicable to information transmission, and NOT applicable to information storage. Therefore, application of Shannon information to information storage in the genome is a misuse of Shannon’s work. The correct information analysis to apply to storage is Kolmogorov’s analysis, which erects an entirely different measure of information content that is intended strictly to be applicable to storage. Mixing and matching the two is a familiar bait-and-switch operation that propagandists for creationist doctrine are fond of.
However, the ultimate reason why creationist canards about information are canards, is simply this. Information is NOT a magic entity. It doesn’t require magic to produce it. Ultimately, “information” is nothing more than the observational data that is extant about the current state of a system. That is IT. No magic needed. All that happens, in real world physical systems, is that different system states lead to different outcomes when the interactions within the system take place. Turing alighted upon this notion when he wrote his landmark paper on computable numbers, and used the resulting theory to establish that Hilbert’s conjecture upon decidability in formal axiomatic systems was false.
Of course, it’s far easier to visualise the process at work, when one has an entity such as a Turing machine to analyse this - a Turing machine has precise, well-defined states, and precise, well-defined interactions that take place when the machine occupies a given state. But this is precisely what we have with DNA - a system that can exist in a number of well-defined states, whose states determine the nature of the interactions that occur during translation, and which result in different outcomes for different states. indeed, the DNA molecule plays a passive role in this: its function is simply to store the sequence of states that will result, ultimately, in the synthesis of a given protein, and is akin to the tape running through a Turing machine. The real hard work is actually performed by the ribosomes, which take that state data and use it to bolt together amino acids into chains to form proteins, which can be thought of as individual biological ‘Turing machines’ whose job is to perform, mechanically and mindlessly in accordance with the electrostatic and chemical interactions permitting this, the construction of a protein using the information arising from DNA as the template. Anyone who thinks magic is needed in all of this, once again, is in need of an education.
As for the canard that “mutations cannot produce new information”, this is manifestly false. Not only does the above analysis explicitly permit this, the production of new information (in the form of new states occupied by DNA molecules) has been observed taking place in the real world and documented in the relevant scientific literature. If you can’t be bothered reading any of this voluminous array of scientific papers, and understanding the contents thereof, before erecting this particularly moronic canard, then don’t bother erecting the canard in the first place, because it will simply demonstrate that you are scientifically ignorant. Indeed, the extant literature not only covers scientific papers explicitly dealing with information content in the genome, such as Thomas D. Schneider’s paper, handily entitled Evolution And Biological Information, to make your life that bit easier, but also papers on de novo gene origination, of which there are a good number, several of which I have presented here in the past in previous threads. The mere existence of these scientific papers, and the data that they document, blows tiresome canards about “information” out of the water with a nuclear depth charge. Post information canards at your peril after reading this.
Whilst dwelling on information, another creationist canard also needs to be dealt with here, namely the false conflation of information with ascribed meaning. Which can be demonstrated to be entirely false by reference to the following sequence of hexadecimal bytes in a computer’s memory:
81 16 00 2A FF 00
To a computer with an 8086 processor, those bytes correspond to the following single machine language instruction:
ADC [2A00H], 00FFH
To a computer with a 6502 processor, those bytes correspond to the following machine language instruction sequence:
CLC
ASL ($00,X)
LDX #$FF
BRK
To a computer with a 6809 processor, those bytes correspond to the following machine language instruction sequence:
CMPA #$16
NEG $2AFF
NEG ??
the ?? denoting the fact that for this processor, the byte sequence is incomplete, and two more bytes are needed to supply the address operand for the NEG instruction.
Now, we have three different ascribed meanings to one stream of bytes. Yet, none of these ascribed meanings influences either the Shannon information content, when that stream is transmitted from one computer to another, or the Kolmogorov information content when those bytes are stored in memory. Ascribed meaning is irrelevant to both rigorous information measures. As is to be expected, when one regards information content simply as observational data about the state of the system (in this case, the values of the stored bytes in memory). Indeed, it is entirely possible to regard ascribed meaning as nothing other than the particular interactions driven by the underlying data, once that data is being processed, which of course will differ from processor to processor. Which means that under such an analysis, even ascribed meaning, which creationists fallaciously conflate with information content, also requires no magical input. All that is required is the existence of a set of interactions that will produce different outcomes from the different observed states of the system (with the term ‘observation’ being used here sensu lato to mean any interaction that is capable of differentiating between the states of the system of interest).
Moving on …
This is bullshit and lies, plain and simple. The sequence from Rhipidistian fishes to tetrapods alone falsfies this lie of yours. As for the accusation of fabrication, that’s creationist territory.
Here’s a list of relevant fossils from that sequence:
Osteolepis : Originally found in Scotland;
Eusthenopteron : Originally found in Miguasha, Quebec (along with other Crossopterygian fishes such as Miguashaia, which is named for the location);
Gogonasus : Originally found in Western Australia;
Elpisostege : Originally found in Quebec, Canada;
Panderichthys : Originally found in Latvia;
Ventastega : Originally found in Latrvia;
Hypnerpeton : Originally found in Pennsylvania, USA;
Tulerpeton : Originally found in Russia;
Tiktaalik : Originally found at Ellsemere Island, Nunavut, Canada;
Jakubsonia : Originally found in Russia;
Elginerpeton : Originally found in Scotland;
Livoniana : Originally found in Latvia and Estonia;
Metaxygnathus : Originally found in New South Wales, Australia;
Obruchevichthys : Originally found in Latvia;
Sinostega : Originally found in north west China;
Acanthostega : Originally found in eastern Greenland;
Ichthyostega : Originally found in eastern Greenland;
Densignathus : Originally found in Pennsylvania, USA.
By the way, you do realise that palaeontologists now have something like 17 different species in the theropod to bird series? Here’s an incomplete list:
Shuvuuia … 81 million years ago
Protarchaeopteryx … 122 million years ago
Sinosauropteryx … 122 million years ago
Sinornithosaurus … 122 million years ago
Caudipteryx … 125 million years ago
Beipiaosaurus … 125 million years ago
Yixianosaurus … 125 million years ago
Jinfengopteryx … 125 million years ago
Sinocalliopteryx … 125 million years ago
Cryptovolans … 130 million years ago
Dilong … 130 million years ago
Microraptor … 130 million years ago
Archaeopteryx … 155 million years ago
Pedopenna … 160 million years ago
Epidendrosaurus … 170-120 million years ago (date yet to be more precisely determined)
Scansoriopteryx … 170-120 million years ago (date yet to be more precisely determined)
The critical thinkers here will be interested in this scientific paper which contains an extensive family tree of theropods and pre-Avian dinosaurs, namely:
A Basal Dromaeosaurid And Size Evolution Preceding Avian Flight by Alan H. Turner, Diego Pol, Julia A. Clarke, Gregroy M. Erickson and Mark A. Noreli, Science, 317: 1378-1381 (7th September 2007)
This paper includes a good number of illustrations of the fossils of a recent discovery among the Dromaeosaurids, namely Mahakala omnogovae - indeed, the paper describes the holotype.
Once again, you’ve been found to be disseminating easily exposable lies.
Oh dear, you just had to wade into this territory, didn’t you?
Strap yourself in again, you’re in for another hard ride.
Creationists have a totally fuckwitted understanding of what the Second Law of Thermodynamics actually says. Moreover, when Rudolf Clausius formulated the 2LT in the 19th century, he was careful to be specific about the nature of thermodynamic systems, and classified them into three groups:
[1] Isolated systems are systems that engage in no exchange of matter or energy with their surroundings. Such systems are therefore reliant upon the internal energy that they already possess. However, isolated systems constitute an idealisation that is almost never achieved in practice, and are mostly useful as a starting point for developing thermodynamic theory prior to extending it to the other classes of system.
[2] Closed systems are systems that engage in exchange of energy with the surroundings, but no exchange of matter. A good example of a closed system would be a solar panel, which does not exchange matter with its surroundings, but which, when illuminated, is a net recipient of energy in the form of visible light, which it then converts to electricity, which we can use.
[3] Open systems are systems that engage in exchange of both energy and matter with the surroundings. Living organisms plainly fall into this latter category.
When Rudolf Clausius erected his original statement of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, he stated it thus:
The trouble with the 2LT is that it applies to all of these systems, but the exact manner in which it applies differs between the three classes of system. Clausius’ original statement about the application of the 2LT to an isolated system does not apply to the other classes of system in anything like the same manner. Trouble is, creationists alight upon the statement about entropy increasing, which was originally erected by Clausius to describe isolated systems, and think that the formulation Clausius erected to apply to isolated systems applies to all systems in the same manner, when Clausius himself plainly stated that it doesn’t.
In a non isolated system, if there is an energy input, that energy input can be harnessed to perform useful work, such as locally decreasing the entropy of entities within the system in exchange for a greater increase in entropy beyond those systems. As long as there exists inhomogeneity within the universe, i.e., there exist regions of differing conditions with respect to material content, energy flux, etc., any net recipient of energy from an outside energy source can harness that energy to perform useful work, including work that results in a temporary local decrease of entropy. The Earth constitutes such a system, because it is engaging in both matter and energy transfer with the surroundings, and is in fact a large net recipient of energy from the surroundings. See that yellow thing in the sky? It’s called The Sun. It’s a vast nuclear fusion reactor 866,000 miles across that is irradiating the Earth with massive amounts of energy as I type this. Energy that can be harnessed to perform useful work such as constructing living organisms.
Incidentally, as a tangential diversion, the classical formulation has again required revision to take account of more recent developments with respect to observed phenomena, which is why we now have a scientific discipline called Quantum Thermodynamics … a discipline that was contributed to by, among others, Stephen Hawking, when he published his landmark paper on the radiative nature of black holes that brings them into equilibrium with the Second Law of Thermodynamics. I don’t recall him ruling out evolution as a result of this.
Another common fallacy is the wholly non-rigorous association of entropy with “disorder”, however this is defined. This has been known to be non-rigorous by physicists for decades, because there exist numerous documented instances of systems whose entropy increases when they spontaneously self-assemble into ordered structures as a result of the effect of electrostatic forces. Lipid bilayers are an important example of this, which are found throughout the biosphere.
The following scientific paper is apposite here:
Gentle Force Of Entropy Bridges Disciplines by David Kestenbaum, Science, 279: 1849 (20th March 1998)
Phospholipids being an excellent example thereof. In fact, any chemical system in which there exists the capacity for electrostatic forces to apply to either aggregating or reacting molecules can exhibit this phenomenon. Which is why scientists have long since abandoned the notion that “entropy” equals “disorder”, which requires a thorough statistical mechanical treatment in terms of microstates in any case.
This is applied to the physics and physical chemistry of lipid bilayers in the following paper:
Electrostatic Repulsion Of Positively Charged Vesicles And Negatively Charged Objects by
Helim Aranda-Espinoza, Yi Chen, Nily Dan, T. C. Lubensky, Philip Nelson, Laurence Ramos and D. A. Weitz, Science, 285: 394-397 (16th July 1999)
in which the authors calculated that the entropy of the lipid bilayer system increased when it arranged itself spontaneously into an ordered structure in accordance with the laws of electrostatics.
Entropy, as rigorously defined, has units of Joules per Kelvin, and is therefore a function of energy versus thermodynamic temperature. The simple fact of the matter is that if the thermodynamic temperature increases, then the total entropy of a given system decreases if no additional energy was input into the system in order to provide the increase in thermodynamic temperature. Star formation is an excellent example of this, because the thermodynamic temperature at the core of a gas cloud increases as the cloud coalesces under gravity. All that is required to increase the core temperature to the point where nuclear fusion is initiated is sufficient mass. No external energy is added to the system. Consequently, the entropy at the core decreases due to the influence of gravity driving up the thermodynamic temperature. Yet the highly compressed gas in the core is hardly “ordered”.
More to the point, there are scientific papers in existence establishing that evolution is perfectly consistent with the 2LT. Two important papers being:
Entropy And Evolution by Daniel F. Styer, American Journal of Physics, 78(11): 1031-1033 (November 2008) DOI: 10.1119/1.2973046
Natural Selection As A Physical Principle by Alfred J. Lotka, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, 8: 151-154 (1922) [full paper downloadable from here]
Evolution Of Biological Complexity by Christoph Adami, Charles Ofria and Travis C. Collier, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, 97(9): 4463-4468 (25th April 2000) [Full paper downloadable from here]
Order From Disorder: The Thermodynamics Of Complexity In Biology by Eric D. Schneider and James J. Kay, in Michael P. Murphy, Luke A.J. O’Neill (ed), What is Life: The Next Fifty Years. Reflections on the Future of Biology, Cambridge University Press, pp. 161-172 [Full paper downloadable from here]
Natural Selection For Least Action by Ville R. I. Kaila and Arto Annila, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London Part A, 464: 3055-3070 (22nd july 2008) [Full paper downloadable from here]
Evolution And The Second Law Of Thermodynamics by Emory F. Bunn, arXiv.org, 0903.4603v1 (26th March 2009) [Download full paper from here]
Let’s take a look at some of these, shall we?
First of all, we have this:
So, even as far back as 1922, scientists were arguing that evolution is not in violation of the Second law of Thermodynamics. Interesting revelation, yes?
Lotka continues with this:
Now this, as I’ve jsut stated, was written as far back as 1922, which means that scientists have been aware that thermodynamic laws and evolution are not in conflict for eighty-seven years.
I’ll cover the other papers in more detail in a separate post, as I’m in danger of exceeding the post size limit. Watch this space 