To: Right Wing Professor
Actually you have new information as soon as you change something. Meaning is something different and a piece of information is only meaningful in a certain context.
What creationists mean with new information is the extension of the information carrier, in this case the DNA. They say this does not happen but this is not true since due to copy errors, genes can get duplicated (but I guess you're the expert on this). Now your information carrier is longer i.e. it can store more information (in your example you'd have 55 letters instead of 50 for instance).
It's true that in this process no new information has been added since this particular gene is redundant. However, this copy can mutate and so you end up with new information.
So the creationist "no new information" argument is bogus at best.
619 posted on
07/12/2002 6:51:22 PM PDT by
BMCDA
To: BMCDA
It's true that in this process no new information has been added since this particular gene is redundant. However, this copy can mutate and so you end up with new information. So the creationist "no new information" argument is bogus at best.It is not bogus. First of all, the only mechanism that evolutionists have figured would make new information possible is gene duplication. This is a very restricted means of evolving for this reason - the size of the gene limits the possibilities. Secondly, all organisms have duplicate genes throughout the genome (except in the sex cells). The two alleles of the genes perform ssentially the same functions but with small differences. This shows that a gene with slight differences will not result in a transformation of a species.
But the problem is bigger than that. Essentially genes are factories - mostly of proteins and enzymes. Like a factory, they are told what to make and when to make it by others. In this case, the control mechanism is what tells the genes when and what to produce (because many genes can produce more than one product). So even a completely useful, working gene would not do any work because as a new unknown gene it would not be put to work by the program that runs the organism.
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