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?

[dianaiad]

Because he understands that information cannot be produced by randomness. To even think otherwise borders on some sort of mental disorder.

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[Volbrigade]

[Replying to post 80 by sfs]

But by all means, if you Robert Carter can tell us where the information for antibodies comes from, great. What's he say?

Sorry to disappoint you, but the first article that came up when I searched on "antibodies" was not by Dr. Carter. I hope you'll accept it anyway, as being written by sane people who recognize the impossibility of order arising from chaos; information from randomness; men from microbes.

Now, I'm here to learn. And you're obviously more knowledgeable than I am about the specifics of the processes under discussion (though that knowledge is highly suspect: I man who is so wrong about such a fundamental issue; who truly believes randomness can produce information, noise can produce signal, cannot be trusted with regard to anything they assert; I must assume that you have facts that you are professing in such a way as to be divorced from any real-world correspondence to truth; such as when a paleontologist finds a fossilized fish and confidently proclaims: "500 million years old!").

So, do me a kindness and tell me precisely where the linked article is wrong in its facts, or its conclusions. Thanks!

http://creation.com/immune-system-antibody-diversity

[sfs]

[ad hominem fallacy deleted]

So, do me a kindness and tell me precisely where the linked article is wrong in its facts, or its conclusions. Thanks!

http://creation.com/immune-system-antibody-diversity

The relevant part of the article is the description of the adaptive immune system. (We're not discussing the evolution of this or any other system at the moment; we're just discussing whether random processes can generate information.) That part seems accurate enough, judging from a cursory read. It describes the generation of antibodies from the "unique combination of randomly selected V, (D) and J gene segments", plus the addition of nucleotides that are "randomly inserted". Based on that article, whose authors you trust, what kind of process is it that produces the information in antibodies?

[Goat]

[Replying to post 80 by sfs]

But by all means, if you Robert Carter can tell us where the information for antibodies comes from, great. What's he say?

Sorry to disappoint you, but the first article that came up when I searched on "antibodies" was not by Dr. Carter. I hope you'll accept it anyway, as being written by sane people who recognize the impossibility of order arising from chaos; information from randomness; men from microbes.

Now, I'm here to learn. And you're obviously more knowledgeable than I am about the specifics of the processes under discussion (though that knowledge is highly suspect: I man who is so wrong about such a fundamental issue; who truly believes randomness can produce information, noise can produce signal, cannot be trusted with regard to anything they assert; I must assume that you have facts that you are professing in such a way as to be divorced from any real-world correspondence to truth; such as when a paleontologist finds a fossilized fish and confidently proclaims: "500 million years old!").

So, do me a kindness and tell me precisely where the linked article is wrong in its facts, or its conclusions. Thanks!

http://creation.com/immune-system-antibody-diversity

Gosh, I found a massive error in the first two lines. It talks about 'Irreducibly complex', and , well, yes, there is a method for irreducibly complex systems to evolved. As a matter of fact, Hermman Miller predicted it back in 1918, and repeated his prediction in 1939... although he called it 'interlocking complexity'.

With that massive error in just the first two lines, it is hard to take anything else from that

Now. let's look at least one of the authors. Let's look at Jerry Bergman. He has his 'PHD in Biology'.. However.. he got it at Columbia Pacific University, a nonaccredited correspondence school that was ordered to cease operations in California in 1999 by the Marin County Superior Court.
(See here

That makes his claim for having a doctorate less than stellar. He knows enough to dazzle lots of scienciey sounding words.. but .. well.. the accuracy apparently is not very good.

[Volbrigade]

[Replying to post 84 by Goat]

Pity regarding CPU. Perhaps they lost their accreditation for taking the stance that randomness cannot produce information.

Dr. Bergman also has degrees from

"Medical College of Ohio, Wayne State University in Detroit, The University of Toledo, and Bowling Green State University. He has over 800 publications in 12 languages and 20 books and monographs. He has also taught at the Medical College of Ohio where he was a research associate in the department of experimental pathology, and he also taught 6 years at the University of Toledo, and 7 years at Bowing Green State University..."

as well as

"Among his books is a monograph on peer evaluation published by the College Student Journal Press, a Fastback on the creation-evolution controversy published by Phi Delta Kappa, a book on vestigial organs with Dr George Howe (Vestigial Organs are Fully Functional), a book on psychology and religious cults, a book on religious discrimination published by Onesimus Press, and a book on mental health published by Claudius Verlag in Mnchen. He has also published a college textbook on evaluation (Boston, Houghton Mifflin Co.), and has contributed to dozens of other textbooks. He was also a consultant for over 20 science text books, mostly biology and biochemistry.

Dr Bergman has presented over one hundred scientific papers at professional and community meetings in the United States, Canada, and Europe. To discuss his research, he has been a featured speaker on many college campuses throughout the United States and Europe, and is a frequent guest on radio and television programs. His research has made the front page in newspapers throughout the country, has been featured by the Paul Harvey Show several times, and has been discussed by David Brinkley, Chuck Colson, and other nationally known commentators on national television.

His other work experience includes over ten years experience at various Mental Health/Psychology clinics as a licensed professional clinical counselor and three years full time corrections research for a large county circuit court in Michigan and inside the walls of Jackson Prison (SPSM), the largest walled prison in the world. He has also served as a consultant for CBS News, ABC News, Readers Digest, Amnesty International, several government agencies and for two Nobel Prize winners, including the inventor of the transistor. In the past decade he has consulted or has testified as an expert witness or consultant in almost one-hundred court cases. A Fellow of the American Scientific Association, member of The National Association for the Advancement of Science, and many other professional associations, he is listed in Whos Who in America, Whos Who in the Midwest and in Whos Who in Science and Religion."

Any of that count for anything?

I mean, I realize they are all just the product of random occurrences...

I searched to see where Herman Miller received his degree, prior to 1918, to posit how an education into the biological understanding of that time might compare with Dr. Bergman's, but couldn't find a bio on him in a cursory search. Oh well.

For that matter, and come to think of it -- what was Mendel's degree in? Or, now I think about -- Kepler's? Galileo's? Newton's? Darwin's? I'm told that Einstein wasn't really a very good student.

No matter.

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!

[Peter]

Evolution would be random if environmental suitability (survival) was perfectly random. As it turns out, environmental suitability is actually based on an individuals traits which are genetically determined and is anything but random. Try not to be confused because there are some random processes within Evolution (mutation, copy errors, etc.) because the whole process is guided by environmental suitability also called natural selection. That's the key. Random improvements are fixed into the population by natural selection while random deterioration is selected out. It's an incredibly simple, slow, trial and error process but ultimately a powerful mechanism that explains soup to man.

[sfs]

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;
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.)

[sfs]

Evolution would be random if environmental suitability (survival) was perfectly random. As it turns out, environmental suitability is actually based on an individuals traits which are genetically determined and is anything but random. Try not to be confused because there are some random processes within Evolution (mutation, copy errors, etc.) because the whole process is guided by environmental suitability also called natural selection. That's the key. Random improvements are fixed into the population by natural selection while random deterioration is selected out. It's an incredibly simple, slow, trial and error process but ultimately a powerful mechanism that explains soup to man.

I don't find this a useful way of thinking about it. If natural selection is thought of as a process at all, it must be a stochastic one -- it's certainly not a deterministic one (except for the trivial case of selection against lethal mutations). I prefer, though, to think of selection as a bias to the random process of genetic drift.

[Goat]

[Replying to post 84 by Goat]

Pity regarding CPU. Perhaps they lost their accreditation for taking the stance that randomness cannot produce information.

Dr. Bergman also has degrees from

"Medical College of Ohio, Wayne State University in Detroit, The University of Toledo, and Bowling Green State University. He has over 800 publications in 12 languages and 20 books and monographs. He has also taught at the Medical College of Ohio where he was a research associate in the department of experimental pathology, and he also taught 6 years at the University of Toledo, and 7 years at Bowing Green State University..."

as well as

"Among his books is a monograph on peer evaluation published by the College Student Journal Press, a Fastback on the creation-evolution controversy published by Phi Delta Kappa, a book on vestigial organs with Dr George Howe (Vestigial Organs are Fully Functional), a book on psychology and religious cults, a book on religious discrimination published by Onesimus Press, and a book on mental health published by Claudius Verlag in Mnchen. He has also published a college textbook on evaluation (Boston, Houghton Mifflin Co.), and has contributed to dozens of other textbooks. He was also a consultant for over 20 science text books, mostly biology and biochemistry.

Dr Bergman has presented over one hundred scientific papers at professional and community meetings in the United States, Canada, and Europe. To discuss his research, he has been a featured speaker on many college campuses throughout the United States and Europe, and is a frequent guest on radio and television programs. His research has made the front page in newspapers throughout the country, has been featured by the Paul Harvey Show several times, and has been discussed by David Brinkley, Chuck Colson, and other nationally known commentators on national television.

His other work experience includes over ten years experience at various Mental Health/Psychology clinics as a licensed professional clinical counselor and three years full time corrections research for a large county circuit court in Michigan and inside the walls of Jackson Prison (SPSM), the largest walled prison in the world. He has also served as a consultant for CBS News, ABC News, Readers Digest, Amnesty International, several government agencies and for two Nobel Prize winners, including the inventor of the transistor. In the past decade he has consulted or has testified as an expert witness or consultant in almost one-hundred court cases. A Fellow of the American Scientific Association, member of The National Association for the Advancement of Science, and many other professional associations, he is listed in Whos Who in America, Whos Who in the Midwest and in Whos Who in Science and Religion."

Any of that count for anything?

I mean, I realize they are all just the product of random occurrences...

I searched to see where Herman Miller received his degree, prior to 1918, to posit how an education into the biological understanding of that time might compare with Dr. Bergman's, but couldn't find a bio on him in a cursory search. Oh well.

For that matter, and come to think of it -- what was Mendel's degree in? Or, now I think about -- Kepler's? Galileo's? Newton's? Darwin's? I'm told that Einstein wasn't really a very good student.

No matter.

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!

Well, no it doesn't count for anything. When someone goes to a paper mill and misrepresents themselves, it ruins their credibility.

And, I can tell, this entire claim about information is one big red herring. It seems that the argument. First of all.. you totally are ignoring , or perhaps don't understand what 'natural selection' is. That is a filter that takes random results, and eliminates 'bad' results, and keeps good results.

Net, you are doing the logical fallacy of equivocation. DNA is nothing like bits and bytes. It acts more like a template that controls the order of the amino acids that control how a protein is formed. So, it's not the same kind of information you are blathering about. A change in the shape of the proteins are what drives evolution. Some shapes will provide functions either better or worse than the previous shape, or it could be close enough that it doesn't make a difference. That shape is 'information'. It is not the same kind of information you are trying to make an analogy to. Basically, your analogy is just one huge amount of misunderstanding on how biology works, what 'information' is, and it ignores how DNA works.

Now,in real world examples,,,.. what happens when there is imperfect copying of gene into a new generation. The resulting proteins that use that gene can be slightly different, or they can be the same. In either case, you have a variation of the gene that is different that then rest of the population. That basically IS new information in the population. .. although it's not the same kind of 'information' that creationist are using to misrepresent biology.

Diversity is increased, and that is an increase in information. Sometimes, a selective filter gets applied, and the offspring is removed from the population. In the wild, this filter is 'natural selection'.. and is enforced by 'reproductive success'.

Thus, new variations of genes are introduced into the population, and new variations of genes are also 'new information'... and it's all because of random mutation.

[Peter]

Evolution would be random if environmental suitability (survival) was perfectly random. As it turns out, environmental suitability is actually based on an individuals traits which are genetically determined and is anything but random. Try not to be confused because there are some random processes within Evolution (mutation, copy errors, etc.) because the whole process is guided by environmental suitability also called natural selection. That's the key. Random improvements are fixed into the population by natural selection while random deterioration is selected out. It's an incredibly simple, slow, trial and error process but ultimately a powerful mechanism that explains soup to man.

I don't find this a useful way of thinking about it. If natural selection is thought of as a process at all, it must be a stochastic one -- it's certainly not a deterministic one (except for the trivial case of selection against lethal mutations). I prefer, though, to think of selection as a bias to the random process of genetic drift.

If I understand your post correctly you believe natural selection is a random process. I must not be understanding you correctly because if it was random, evolution would not occur. Keep in mind that it's not called Natural Selection by accident. It really does select for better survival and reproduction. In what way is this selective process "random"?

Also, how is selecting against lethal mutations trivial? If you're genetically coded to develop inside out, you die. That seems rather important for a healthy population.