Information is being CHANGED. Not lost or gained. CHANGED
Is information “lost” when the 2011 model of a car has less speed and performance but greater fuel economy?
And how does change of information prove evolution as understood in classical Darwinian terms?
I change everyday from younger to older. I am hence evolving in the Darwinian sense? CHANGE per se proves little for Darwin. No one, creationists included, denies that change exists. What sceptics want to see is INCREASED FUNCTIONALITY.
Regarding the car, well, I’m not sure how you could use that as an example because every single car I see has been DESIGNED INTELLIGENTLY by engineers to work the way they do.
As for the wordplay on evolution, I want an example of DARWINIAN EVOLUTION ( as we understand the term ) IN ACTION.
Citing methicillin resistance bacteria isn’t YET going to cut it. The functionality of the whole organism has NOT increased ( and that is what Darwinian Evolution entails). The immune system is a built in responce that was built-in that way. It clearly indicates a preexisting feedback mechanism built into the genome. The genome is ready to produce a vast array of antibodies to fight off a multitude of infections.
The novel adaptation in e. coli to digest citrate isn't a new function?
The ability to survive Methocillin through mutational change of an enzyme such that it could metabolize it, thus it can live, IS increased functionality.
Living in an environment where previous to the CHANGE you would die is a new function, that allows all other functions.
The reason I bring up cars is because of mechanical engineering and to illustrate that an new or increased function comes with a trade-off. BMW has some excellent engineers, but no amount of engine and body tweaking is going to make them able to create the fastest most high performance car on the road that ALSO gets the greatest fuel economy - and put it into production at a great price.
Evolution doesn't have a magical bag of tricks that can overcome the laws of physics. DNA codes for one of twenty amino acids that form a useful 3-D configuration that works with the electrochemistry.
Thus, as with a car, you can either have the fastest most efficient ribosome possible, or you have one that is fast and efficient enough - but can ALSO ‘drive through the mud’ in that it can survive the antibiotic that targets ribosomes.
So yes, new or increased functionality. No, no magic that overcomes the principle that there is no such thing as a free lunch.
Darwinian evolution, as the term is understood by those who understand the term - is this type of adaptive change allowing new function or survival in conditions that previously would be fatal - skin color change - metabolic adaptations to new conditions like the presence of nylon - etc etc.
THROUGH the mechanism of natural selection of genetic variation.
Any time there is a natural selective pressure that leads to a change in the DNA of a population that overcomes that pressure THAT is an example of Darwinian evolution.
Common descent of species is the accumulation of differences (quite slowly, reflecting a fidelity rate in copying DNA of 99.99997%) in separate populations of what was formerly the same species such that a 2% change in genetic DNA can make them two different species.
It is not like ‘and one day erosion happened and this valley formed’ or ‘and one day gravity happened and that star formed’; similarly it is not ‘and one day evolution happened and we had two different species’.
Yet the erosion we see is necessary and sufficient to explain geological formations.
The gravity we see is necessary and sufficient to explain the astrological formations and movements we see.
The INEVITABLE change and accumulation of change in separate species we observe is necessary and more than sufficient to explain a 2% difference in genetic DNA and a 6% difference in genomic DNA in two mammalian species over some six or seven million years.