Common Creationist Canards

[Haven]

Creationists (especially of the young-Earth variety) tend to use several ill-defined, unscientific, and flat-out erroneous terms and concepts when arguing in favor of creationism or critiquing evolution. These include, but are not limited to:

• Information: An ill-defined concept typically used when discussing genetics. Creationists often claim that evolution can't produce "new information," by which they generally mean "new genetic material." This is false. Also, "information" is not a scientific term and it has no standing in biology.
  
  Irreducible Complexity: A claim that certain features of (usually animal) life, such as eyes, limbs, and wings, could not have evolved because said features would be useless in a less-than-fully-formed state. This concept is useless because no features of life have been found to be irreducibly complex.
  
  Kind: Another ill-defined concept that essentially means whatever the creationist wants it to at the time. May be equated with species, genus, order, or something completely novel or incoherent. Generally, it's meant to draw the line between "microevolution" (changes within a "kind") and macroevolution (the change of one "kind" into another "kind"). Creationists should kindly provide a definition of this concept or it is useless.
  
  Macroevolution and Microevolution: Unscientific terms meant to divide the unitary process of evolution. As mentioned before, microevolution is said to be changes within a "kind" and macroevolution is said to be changes between "kinds." Without a coherent definition of "kind," this doesn't get off the ground.

Debate questions: Are these common creationist concepts coherent? Why or why not? Can such concepts be shown to be relevant to the natural world? Are these concepts biologically sound, or just meaningless canards?

[Volbrigade]

sfs -- exemplary work, keying in on the five uses of the word "random" in the CMI link.

I know when I'm licked. And am man enough to admit it.

The elegant, complex processes involved in the somatic recombination of

"V, (D) and J gene segments. Thus, VL and JL gene segments can join in any combination in the light chain, and VH, DH, JH gene segments can join in any combination in the heavy chain. Variable region recombination occurs primarily in three steps: 1) looping out, 2) excision and 3) ligation and is mediated by recombinases, exonucleases and DNA ligases or nucleotidyl transferases."

in order to produce

"...over 24 million different antibodies that recognize the large majority of significant antigens..."

and

"...can give rise to over 10 (to the 11th power) different antibody specificities in humans..."

is a slam dunk, case closed confirmation of information arising from randomness. Which can be logically traced back to the uphill climb of all biological systems to their common single-celled progenitor, by random processes; as well as the assembly of that first single cell, by likewise random processes. And back even further, to to the explosion that produce the matter that wound up in that first living cell, which was randomly produced.

Thanks for clearing that up!

As if in confirmation of the above, this morning -- by random coincidence -- I happened to knock over a jar of black and white beads I had in my workshop, for some random reason.

Wanting to make sure that didn't happen again, I decided to string the beads on a thread, so they would have contiguity.

Lo and behold, after I finished the job, I noticed: if you assigned the white beads a Morse Code "dot", and the black ones a "dash", there was a pattern in the arrangement of the beads: dot-dot, dash-dot -- "in"; dash, four dots, dot -- "the"; dash-three dots, dot, dash-dash-dot -- "beg..."

Do you know that as it randomly happened, I just so happened to have randomly strung those beads together, to produce the information contained in the sentence "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth..." in Morse Code?

So, yes -- randomness can indeed produce information!

It's all so clear now!

Ah, the sarcastic pseudo-concession -- a nice dodge when you don't have an argument. Sorry, but we're not debating white and black beads, or the origins of the immune system. We're debating whether random processes can produce new information.

I've given two examples of random processes that produce new information. At this point you can either
1) Show that they're not really random, or don't really produce new information;

I have, repeatedly; you won't accept it, because it would require you to abandon your assumptions.

2) Acknowledge (for real) that random processes really do produce new information, and that all of those people you said were crazy and incompetent for thinking so were right. (And, of course, never use this argument again.)

Never use truth? Substance?

That's asking a lot. How about if I just agree to stop using them with you, on this thread? Deal?

[dianaiad]

sfs -- exemplary work, keying in on the five uses of the word "random" in the CMI link.

I know when I'm licked. And am man enough to admit it.

The elegant, complex processes involved in the somatic recombination of

"V, (D) and J gene segments. Thus, VL and JL gene segments can join in any combination in the light chain, and VH, DH, JH gene segments can join in any combination in the heavy chain. Variable region recombination occurs primarily in three steps: 1) looping out, 2) excision and 3) ligation and is mediated by recombinases, exonucleases and DNA ligases or nucleotidyl transferases."

in order to produce

"...over 24 million different antibodies that recognize the large majority of significant antigens..."

and

"...can give rise to over 10 (to the 11th power) different antibody specificities in humans..."

is a slam dunk, case closed confirmation of information arising from randomness. Which can be logically traced back to the uphill climb of all biological systems to their common single-celled progenitor, by random processes; as well as the assembly of that first single cell, by likewise random processes. And back even further, to to the explosion that produce the matter that wound up in that first living cell, which was randomly produced.

Thanks for clearing that up!

As if in confirmation of the above, this morning -- by random coincidence -- I happened to knock over a jar of black and white beads I had in my workshop, for some random reason.

Wanting to make sure that didn't happen again, I decided to string the beads on a thread, so they would have contiguity.

Lo and behold, after I finished the job, I noticed: if you assigned the white beads a Morse Code "dot", and the black ones a "dash", there was a pattern in the arrangement of the beads: dot-dot, dash-dot -- "in"; dash, four dots, dot -- "the"; dash-three dots, dot, dash-dash-dot -- "beg..."

Do you know that as it randomly happened, I just so happened to have randomly strung those beads together, to produce the information contained in the sentence "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth..." in Morse Code?

So, yes -- randomness can indeed produce information!

It's all so clear now!

Ah, the sarcastic pseudo-concession -- a nice dodge when you don't have an argument. Sorry, but we're not debating white and black beads, or the origins of the immune system. We're debating whether random processes can produce new information.

I've given two examples of random processes that produce new information. At this point you can either
1) Show that they're not really random, or don't really produce new information;

I have, repeatedly; you won't accept it, because it would require you to abandon your assumptions.

2) Acknowledge (for real) that random processes really do produce new information, and that all of those people you said were crazy and incompetent for thinking so were right. (And, of course, never use this argument again.)

Never use truth? Substance?

That's asking a lot. How about if I just agree to stop using them with you, on this thread? Deal?

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[sfs]

We're debating whether random processes can produce new information.

I've given two examples of random processes that produce new information. At this point you can either
1) Show that they're not really random, or don't really produce new information;

I have, repeatedly; you won't accept it, because it would require you to abandon your assumptions.

Perhaps you're thinking of some other thread, or some other planet. Here in this thread, you have ignored my examples, asserted they were wrong, changed the subject, impugned the competence of anyone who agrees with my argument and questioned my sanity. The two things you haven't tried, however, are logic and evidence. Since those are the only two things that actually matter, that means you've failed. Pretty spectacularly, in fact.

2) Acknowledge (for real) that random processes really do produce new information, and that all of those people you said were crazy and incompetent for thinking so were right. (And, of course, never use this argument again.)

Never use truth? Substance?

If your claims were true, you would be able to support them. You haven't. (You also wouldn't have to resort continually to insults.)

That's asking a lot. How about if I just agree to stop using them with you, on this thread? Deal?

Nope. Falsehood should never be propagated.