I was in an online discussion elsewhere about the scientific evidence about the age of the Earth. I am familiar with the scientific arguments for an old earth, including distant starlight, radiometric dating, tree rings, ice cores, etc. However, I'm interested in some of the scientific arguments for a young (under 10,000 year old) Earth. In your opinion, what is the most compelling piece of scientific evidence for a young earth? Thank you for your input!

Convergent evolution, like the platypus or punctuated equilibrium, is one of those things you need to really spectacularly misunderstand to imagine that it’s an argument for creationism. Nevertheless, for some reason creationists keep bringing it up.

So here I’d like to talk about why convergence actually indicates common descent, based on this figure, in this paper.

The problem for creationists is as follows.

A number of genes involved in echolocation in bats and whales have undergone convergent evolution. This means that when you try to classify mammals by these genes, you get a tree which places bats and whales much too close together (tree B), strongly conflicting with the “true” evolutionary tree (tree C). Creationists often see this conflict as evidence for design.

However, this pattern of convergence only exists if you look at the amino acid sequences of these genes. If you look at the nucleotide sequences, specifically the synonymous sites (which make no difference to the final gene), the “true” evolutionary tree mysteriously reappears (tree A).

This makes perfect sense from an evolutionary point of view. The convergence is driven by selection, so we wouldn’t expect it to affect synonymous sites. Those sites should continue to accurately reflect the fact that bats and whales are only distantly related, and they do.

But how does a creationist explain this pattern? Why would God design similar genes with similar functions for both bats and whales, and then hard-wire a false evolutionary history into only those nucleotides which are irrelevant for function? It’s an incoherent proposition, and it's one of the many reasons creationists shouldn't bring up convergence. It massively hurts their case.

(Usual disclaimer: Not an expert, keen to be corrected. Adapted from a similar post in r/debateevolution.)

Another instalment of my attempts to get creationists to actuallt explain reality, instead of taking potshots at perceived flaws in evolution. Adapted from this.

In the case of the mammalian middle ear, we have multiple independent lines of evidence converging on the same evolutionary scenario, and I hereby challenge any creationist to provide a reasonable explanation for the below that does not involve incremental evolution.

Our story begins in the early nineteenth century (before evolution was a thing), when comparative anatomists noted similarities between the bones that formed the jaw joint of reptiles (quadrate and articular) and the ossicles in the mammalian middle ear (malleus and incus).

From an evolutionary point of view, homology implies a common origin. This suggests the extremely counter-intuitive idea that the mammalian middle ear evolved from the old amniote jaw hinge. Astonishingly, over the past century, multiple independent lines of evidence have emerged that this is in fact what occurred.

It’s important to remember throughout that the homology was identified at least as early as 1837, so this is a proper, independent, evolutionary prediction.

(1) First independent line of evidence: the development from jaw bones to ear bones is directly evidenced by an amazing fossil record which attests a range of intermediate steps in this process.

Essentially, what we see is that a new jaw joint is created, freeing the old jaw bones for their auditory functions, in the following stages:

• Primitive synapsids (“pelycosaurs”) such as Dimetrodon, still have the old amniote jaw joint, but are morphologically clearly synapsids rather than reptiles. So we’re on the branch which leads to mammals, but we still find the old "reptilian" jaw.
• In therapsids such as Scymnognathus and Ictidopsis (picture), the dentary (the mammalian jaw bone) is extended further towards the skull than in the old amniote jaw (a first step towards creating a new jaw joint).
• In tritheledontids and brasilodontids the dentary has a ridge that contacts the skull, but without forming an articulated hinge.
• In early Mammaliaforms like Morganucodon we see a proper joint between the dentary and the skull, while the old amniote hinge continues to exist. These species are double-hinged and thus represent a perfect transitional phase.
• In Liaconodon we find the ossicles that form the old "reptilian" joint detached from the jaw but still connected to it by ossified Meckel’s cartilage.
• We have transitional forms where the Meckel’s cartilage is curved, so that the ossicles are detached even further from the dentary without losing their connection to it. This is found spalacatheroids, a Cretaceous fossil taxon close to the ancestor of modern Theria (placentals and marsupials).
• Finally, we have advanced mammals with a completely detached middle ear.

For the short version, see this evogram. For more detail, see this paper.

If creationism is true, there is no reason why, after having established that the ossicles were related, we should find such a diversity of transitional forms in the fossil record, representing multiple distinct phases in an evolutionary change that never happened.

(2) Line the second. This fossil record corresponds to a plausible evolutionary pathway where every intermediate stage is useful. Possible selective advantages of intermediate stages include the following:

• The old amniote jaw joint would have served simultaneously as a hinge and also transmitted vibrations to the inner ear. Snakes still “hear” in this way](https://www.britannica.com/animal/reptile/Hearing).
• Lighter bones are more sensitive to vibrations, providing a selective benefit for organisms with a more delicate jaw hinge. To compensate for having a less robust joint, the configuration of the jaw muscles was rearranged in early synapsids.
• Extending the dentary (without contacting the skull) would have strengthened the jaw. A single bone is stronger than many small bones.
• Having a point of contact between the dentary and the skull would have further relieved pressure on the ossicles. This functional benefit exists even without forming any kind of hinge.
• The evolution of a full secondary hinge would have provided more bite strength and allowed more complex mammalian biting and chewing.
• Once the more robust mammalian joint had formed, and the ossicles were no longer needed as a joint, their gradual detachment from the jaw bone would have added further to hearing sensitivity. This is consistent with independent evidence that mammals filled a nocturnal niche in the Mesozoic, where hearing is key.

Remember, if you’re a creationist none of this actually happened, so the existence of plausible selective function is no more than yet another coincidence.

(3) This evolutionary history is further reflected in embryonic development and genetics.

• The incus and malleus in mammals develop from the first pharyngeal arch in the same way as the articular and quadrate in birds, by extending and then splitting off from the manible.
• The malleus stays connected to the mandible for most of embyronic development. In marsupials, the middle ear bones initially have the function of supporting the jaw, before taking their “modern” function in hearing.
• The gene Bapx1 is expressed in the articular-quadrate joint in birds, but in the incudomalleolar joint in reptiles.

Again, these bones serve entirely different functions. As relicts of an unguided evolutionary past, you can explain these weird links: evolution works by modifying existing structures and cannot redesign ossicles, their genes and their development from scratch. As an artefact of design, however, all this is a coincidence that is almost impossible to motivate.

Overview paper on the evolution of the mammalian middle ear. This post necessarily only scratches the surface - for instance, there’s a fascinating sequel to the mammalian middle ear when it adapts to aquatic hearing in cetaceans (thanks to u/EvidentlyEmpirical for directing me to that). But a passable creationist explanation of the above would be a good start.

Disclaimer: not an expert, very keen to be corrected on potential inaccuracies, even pedantically.

Modified from this post. An AIG article was linked on r/creation, containing a few recent papers about cetacean evolution that are rather interesting, and that I'd like to see a creationist rebut.

Firstly, a recent paper examining gene losses in cetaceans (newly discovered ones, in addition to the olfactory genes we’re all acquainted with).

These are genes, present in other mammals, but lost in whales - in some cases because their absence was beneficial in an aquatic environment, in other cases because of relaxed selection - relating to functions such as respiration and terrestrial feeding.

Note that the genes for these terrestrial functions are still there, but they have been knocked out by inactivating mutations and are not, or incompletely, transcribed. You couldn’t ask for more damning and intuitive evidence that cetaceans evolved from terrestrial mammals.

If creationists are right and cetaceans did not evolve from terrestrial animals, why do they have knocked-out versions of genes that are not only suited for terrestrial life, but are actively harmful in their niche?

Secondly, a protocetid discovered by Gingerich and co, in this paper. This early cetacean animal lived around 37 million years ago and has some fascinating transitional features that are intermediate between early archaeocete foot-powered swimming and the tail-powered swimming of modern cetaceans.

As we move from early archaeocetes to basilosaurids, the lumbar vertebrae become increasingly flexible to accomodate a more efficient "undulatory" swimming style (flexing the torso up and down, as opposed to paddling with its limbs). This later evolved to the swimming style of modern whales (who derive propulsion from flexing the tail).

Aegicetus and other protocetids preserve not only this intermediate undulatory stage, but also show evidence of transitionality between the paddling and undulatory stages. Although their lumbar columns are more mobile that those of the earliest archaeocetes, they are still less mobile than those of basilosaurids - where the number of lumbar vertebrae was increased to perfect the efficiency of the undulation. Furthermore, Aegicetus also still had limbs, but they are reduced compared to other protocetids, such that Aegicetus could not use them at all for terrestrial locomotion, and only inefficiently for paddling.

If creationists are right and cetaceans did not evolve from terrestrial animals, how is it we find fossil evidence for transitions which did not in fact occur?

Thus, the logical and exact expression of C. Darwin’s statement cited in the introductory part is, “This grand fact of the grouping of all organic beings under what is called the Natural System, is utterly inexplicable on the theory of separate creation.” The adjective, separate, should be inserted necessarily. The evolutionists passed over these implications.

https://youtu.be/TEM1_xz0WHs

This post is not a counterargument to Intelligent Design and Creation, but a defense.

It is proposed that intelligent life came about by numerous, successive, slight modifications through unguided, natural, biochemical processes and genetic mutation. Yet, as software and hardware engineers develop Artificial Intelligence we are quickly learning how much intelligence is required to create intelligence, which lends itself heavily to the defense of Intelligent Design as a possible, in fact, the most likely cause of intelligence and design in the formation of humans and other intelligent lifeforms.

Intelligence is a highly elegant, sophisticated, complex, integrated process. From memory formation and recall, visual image processing, object identification, threat analysis and response, logical analysis, enumeration, speech interpretation and translation, skill development, movement, the list goes on.

There are aspects of human intelligence that are subject to volition or willpower and other parts that are autonomous.

Even while standing still and looking up into the blue sky, you are processing thousands of sources of stimuli and computing hundreds of calculations per second!

To cite biological evolution as the cause of life and thus the cause of human intelligence, you have to explain how unguided and random processes can develop and integrate the level of sophistication we find in our own bodies, including our intelligence and information processing capabilities, not just at the DNA-RNA level, but at the human scale.

To conclude, the development of artificial intelligence reveals just how much intelligence, creativity and resourcefulness is required to create a self-aware intelligence. This supports the conclusion that we, ourselves, are the product of an intelligent mind or minds.

In Sanford's H1N1 study, he claimed that viral attenuation is the result of genetic entropy. Secular biologists recognize that viral attenuation has a basis in selection, and is not propagated by mere entropy alone, but through the improved vectoring as a result of both reducing mortality and reducing the burden of illness: not killing a host leaves more hosts, though likely resistant to reinfection; not disabling your host means they expose more of the population.

When this process runs its course, the virus tends to become [endemic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endemic_(epidemiology\)): it is a capable of surviving in a population indefinitely, as it doesn't tend to be lethal enough to produce gaps in transmission. Under this definition, endemic disease would appear to be nearing peak fitness in objective terms: it is capable of surviving indefinitely. To contrast, a lethal virus is more likely to burn through all possible hosts and become extinct: despite the naive high fitness rate, this organism is utterly unfit for the environment it is in and will go extinct in short order.

However, this 'genetic entropy' disappears when a virus becomes endemic: for example, chickenpox in children has a fatality rate of 1:100,000 cases. Why hasn't the fitness of chickenpox continued to collapse and cause it to disappear?

I am new to this topic. I just recently got back in touch with my aunt, after we haven't spoken for 15 years. During this time she became a bible believer. She believes in Young Earth and every word of the bible is true, but she is not "religious" and not christian, because church, vatican and religion is bad. She believes that there was a universe (created from god?) and the about 6000 years ago god shaped the earth like in genesis and created Adam and Eve. Dinosaurs were alive at the same time as humans. But because it only started with 2 humans there was only a small population of humans and many more dinosaurs, so that there is no fossil record of humans of this time (or so, I hope I remember correctly how she argued). Also something that fossils can form quicker than I think (turning to stone takes only a few weeks, because there is a eiver in Mexico when you put a shoe there it turns to stone?). And back then there was sometjing like Pangea but then there was the big flood and the continents drifted apart. But this didn't take millions of years but only a few years because the big flood.

She wants me to understand what she believes in and I should take a look at the evidence from another point of view, have an open mind, be unbiased.

What is the best evidence for creation? (other than it is writtwn in the bible) What proofs or makes creation (god creating life 6000 years ago) highly likely? Did you change your mind and if so, what evidence changed your mind so you became a believer in creation?

I will eventually have to read the bible to be able to discuss this with her and she also said I am not in a position to talk about the bible if I haven't read it myself. I would just like to get started somewhere.

Carl Sagan's Cosmos has been the most viewed presentation on PBS television. He spent a over a decade of his life doing original research at Cornell University on the origin of life. He wrote a summary of this in the science Journal Nature. Towards the end of the second Cosmos episode he had a five--minute clip presenting the results of this experimental work. Unfortunately, his own words in the Nature article appeared to contradict his own words in the Cosmos program. In fact, they could not be much more opposite to each other than they were.

Here is a YouTube clip wherein I make my analysis:

https://youtu.be/3pYcxFbSs0o

I also include my interpretation of the significance of what he said from a creationist perspective after the analysis. The clip is longer than I wanted it to be, but challenging the word of one of the most famous scientists in the late 1900s requires me to justify and document every statement made.

A natural origin of life appears to be impossible. Natural processes, such as UV sunlight or lightning sparks, are based on uncontrolled sources of energy. They produce uncontrolled reactions on the chemicals exposed to them. This produces a random assortment of new chemicals, not the specific ones needed at specific places and specific points of time for the appearance of life. This should be obvious.

I am a creationist. I believe that a living God created life and did it in such a way that an unbiased person can see that He did it. This observation appears to confirm my understanding.

I just posted a brief (under 4 minutes) clip on YouTube discussing this https://youtu.be/xn3fnr-SkBw . If you have any comments, you may present them here or on YouTube. If you are looking for a short, concise argument showing that a natural origin of life is impossible, this might be it.

This material presented is a brief summary of an article I co-authored and which is available free online at www.osf.io/p5nw3 . This is an extremely technical article written for the professional scientist. You might enjoy seeing just how thoroughly the YouTube summary has actually been worked out.

It seems like this sub was supposed to be a friendly place for creationists to pitch debate... but where is it?

Thesis: as titled, the anthropic principle undermines the fine tuning argument, to the point of rendering it null as a support for any kind of divine intervention.

For a definition, I would use the weak anthropic principle: "We must be prepared to take account of the fact that our location in the universe is necessarily privileged to the extent of being compatible with our existence as observers."

To paraphrase in the terms of my argument: since observers cannot exist in a universe where life can't exist, all observers will exist in universes that are capable of supporting life, regardless of how they arose. As such, for these observers, there may be no observable difference between a universe where they arose by circumstance and a world where they arose by design. As such, the fine tuning argument, that our universe has properties that support life, is rendered meaningless, since we might expect natural life to arise in such a universe and it would make such observations as well. Since the two cases can't be distinguished, there is little reason to choose one over the other merely by the observation of the characteristics of the universe alone.

Prove my thesis wrong.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/06/190613143533.htm

Looking at r/creation, because I haven’t seen any recent posts here arguing against evolution or for creation (as if they were necessarily mutually exclusive), I found the beginnings of a couple series.

In one, we have one where they list problems with evolution. The post was long, but the only thing in it that appears to even potentially suggest separate ancestry is how frogs and humans develop unwebbed fingers differently. In frogs (and other amphibians as a monophyletic group) this is done by extending the digits where in humans (and all other amniotes) this is because of cell death between the fingers. The link above explains this difference without it seeming to be much of a problem for evolution. They also claim that we think marsupials and placental mammals are unrelated which contradicts the common ancestry of all amniotes demonstrated by the finger growth study. This is how homology is supposed to show separate ancestry, rather than divergence from a common ancestor. Remember all therian mammals have placenta, give live birth, and several other features common to the group as a whole (with kangaroos having pseudogenes that are no longer functional for producing a placenta). We have external ear flaps, actual nipples, warmer bodies than even monotremes. Placental mammals lack epipubic bones and a pouch, Marsupials still have the ancestral epipubic bones and a pouch that evolved in their lineage that no other mammals have. These similarities place is in the same larger group, these differences show divergence from a common ancestor. Summary: homology isn’t evidence against evolution, nor does it remotely prove it wrong.

The evidence for creationism so far is the first cause argument. So basically deism. It’s based on the false premise that the Big Bang was a creation ex nihilo event meaning that we start with nothing and then we get a universe. It doesn’t explain the when, where, or how of this causal relationship when you consider there would be no time, space, or energy which are necessary for change to occur anyway. Absolute nothing evidently isn’t possible nor does it make sense for something, much less someone, existing nowhere at no time without potential turning the potential it doesn’t have into a physical result at a location that doesn’t exist so that it changes over time that also doesn’t exist. Even if they could sufficiently demonstrate deism, that’s a long way from specific theism, much less the biblical young Earth creationism derived from a passage about flat Earth cosmology combined with the acceptance of the shape of our planet. Until they can demonstrate a creator or explain why the creation of a flat Earth isn’t about a flat Earth this deistic argument isn’t remotely supportive of their conclusion. Maybe they should use all of the ways presented by Thomas Aquinas to explain the context - because even though the argument is a non-sequitur based on false ideas, it at least progresses from deism to intelligent design.

I was watching a new documentary on netflix called "Night on Earth" when I learned about the Namibian Golden Mole. The mole has non functional eyes - they are covered with fur and cannot see.

This is explained by evolution - covering the eyes lets the animal burrow easier.

How does creationism explain their vestigial eyeballs?

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=P5eUuPyuYBw

Question one. Why are genetic comparisons a valid way to measure if people and even ethnic groups are related but not animal species?

Question two. What are the predictions of common design and how is it falsifiable ?

A pseudo-cross post of /r/creation's 'Are there even any good debate-worthy ID arguments?':

I support ID ideas such as irreducable complexity(such as the ear) or fined tuned universe, but these aren't arguments that can be used against an iron cladded evolutionist. These are more thought expirements, so I rather stick with the YEC evidental apologetics.

The answer in my opinion is no: there are no good arguments for ID.

Let's see some contenders. From /u/SaggysHealthAlt:

irreducable complexity

Irreducible complexity is a barely functioning concept. This is even admitted by proponents such as Behe.

We have pathways for producing many of the structures his definition would claim to be irreducible, which further complicates matters. I have yet to see any refutation of these particular arguments, other than to increase the burden of proof far beyond anything Behe has to maintain: usually requests for full step-by-step evolutionary pathways or "every ancestor" demands which we should all recognize is not a reasonable request.

fined tuned universe

The fine tuned universe is unconvincing on numerous levels: there are many 'constants' that can be altered substantially, if not dropped entirely; it fails to demonstrate that any tuning occurred, or was ever required; and there is absolutely no sign that the biases suggested by the anthropic principle have been taken into account.

From /u/nomenmeum:

I wouldn't call Behe's Devolution argument a thought experiment. He demonstrates, empirically, that natural selection acting on random mutation is a downward process.

Except you are forced to admit that he didn't demonstrate anything, as you sampled from his quote:

it's very likely that all of the identified beneficial mutations worked by degrading or outright breaking the respective ancestor genes.

Very likely? That's a weasel word meaning he hasn't done any work and is simply making a guess.

As Saggy asked:

Has Lenski's argument demonstrated success in "deconverting" evolutionists from their materialistic beliefs?

It's not Lenski's argument -- and no, it hasn't because there's no physical evidence. It's just pleading.

And Sal is beginning to admit that he has no evidence for any of this, he's just running Pascal's Wager. I'm not going to bother with any coverage of that.

So, creationists, what do you think is a good argument?

Rapid large-scale evolutionary divergence in morphology and performance associated with exploitation of a different dietary resource

Hat tip to u/Naugrith who posted this in r/creation:

Here we have a transplanted group of lizards that have developed new physical structures in order to exploit environmental resources.

BOILERPLATE:

This is part 4 of me debunking this article, section by section: "What would count as ‘new information’ in genetics?" (https://creation.com/new-information-genetics)

This post covers the section titled "Is our DNA code really ‘information’?". Here are parts 1-3:

1. https://www.reddit.com/r/debatecreation/comments/ek2pe7/lets_break_something/
2. https://www.reddit.com/r/debatecreation/comments/en4g4r/lets_break_something_part_2/
3. https://www.reddit.com/r/debatecreation/comments/eqd1l3/lets_break_something_part_3/

For the sake of honesty and transparency:

• I'm not an expert in any of the relevant fields. I'll probably make mistakes, but I'll try hard not to.
• I'm good at reading scientific papers and I'll be citing my sources -- please let me know if I omit one you think I should include. Please cite your sources, too, if you make a factual claim.
• If I screw up "basic knowledge" in a field, you can take a pass and just tell me to look it up. If it's been under recent or active research then it's not "basic knowledge", so please include a citation.

​

THE INTERESTING STUFF:

TL;DR & My position:

The authors implode their entire argument in a single paragraph -- not that it needed any help imploding, of course. In an attempt to support their argument, the authors indirectly admit that the information in the genome is indeed material rather than being "immaterial ideas or concepts" as they claim elsewhere, and that it is therefore imminently quantifiable by Shannon information theory contrary to their assertions elsewhere. Their whole argument is built upon these claims, and in this section the authors themselves show these claims to be false.

I don't know what else to say here, besides asking if there's any plausible way I could have gotten this wrong...

​

Here's the section in its entirety:

Some skeptics will resort to simply denying that the DNA truly carries any information, claiming this is just a creationist mental construct. The fact that DNA data storage technology is now being implemented on a massive scale is sufficient to prove that DNA stores data (information). In fact, information can be stored more densely in a drop of DNA-containing water than it can on any computer hard drive. To allow that humans may use DNA to store our own digital information, yet to disallow that our genomes contain ‘information’, would be a blatant instance of special pleading.

I agree, that would be special pleading -- if anybody with sufficient education in a relevant field had ever said such a thing. Since the authors haven't provided a quote or citation, we're left to guess where the authors came up with this one -- my guess is that it's a straw man, but you're welcome to show me I'm wrong.

Anyway, let's get started...

The authors have just spent a lot of effort convincing their readers that "information" is really hard to define, that it's "immaterial", that "information" == "ideas" or "concepts", and trying to get readers to gloss over the fact that they haven't defined any of these 3 terms anyway (information, idea, concept):

Information is impossible to quantify! [Title of a whole section]

[...]

The most difficult area in the debate over information comes down to our ability (or lack of ability) to definitively define or quantify biological information.

[...]

Why would we say Shannon’s ideas have little to do with biological information? Because Shannon’s measure was not truly a measure of information (in the sense of immaterial ideas), but rather a quantification of things that lend themselves to simple metrics (e.g. binary computer code).

[...]

When considering the decay of biological information over time, we cannot quantify the rate of decrease, because information, at its base, is an immaterial concept which does not lend itself to that kind of mathematical treatment.

[...]

But [biologists] cannot say how much ‘information’ is in the genomes of living things. We can create summary statistics of things in the genome, and use that as a proxy for the information content, but this is only scratching the surface.

[...]

What quantity is the color red? Or the feeling of sadness? These are concepts, and information is conceptual.

[...]

Information is carried in so many complex ways (syntax, grammar, contextual clues, etc.) that it staggers the mind to contemplate actually trying to quantify it in an objective way.

[...]

... it is self-evident that information exists (in general), is present as the foundation of our genetics, and can both increase and decrease in quantity (regardless of our ability to define a precise rate for it)

And now they're touting the fact that DNA can be used to store digital information as if it supports, rather than refutes, the biggest pillar supporting their argument! How, dear authors, can the content of the genome be impossible to define or quantify, if we can literally use the DNA which makes up a genome to store and retrieve digital data in material form?

If we are capable of storing and retrieving specific information (data) in synthetic DNA, that means the material of the DNA itself is being used to store encoded digital information -- this type of information is 100% material and quantifiable. If synthetic DNA can be used to store encoded information, then the information in the synthetic DNA fits the Shannon information theory definition of "information", and it can indeed be analyzed using information theory -- just as any encoding process can be analyzed in that manner. And finally, if we can do all this with synthetic DNA, and if natural DNA does indeed contain the information required to define its host organism (which is the premise of the article, after all), then just as in synthetic DNA the information in natural DNA must be encoded in its material and Shannon's information theory can indeed be used to quantify that information!

I don't know how else to say it: the authors themselves have destroyed the main pillar supporting their argument -- shoddy as it already was. If the information in natural DNA is quantifiable, as proven by our ability to store digital information in synthetic DNA, then how can the authors assert that such information is immaterial, or that Shannon information theory cannot be used to study it? How can they assert that this information can't have come about by random processes, as I've discussed in parts 1-3? And failing these, how can they assert that the theory of evolution cannot account for the diversity of life we see on Earth today?

Any ideas, guys?

​

As is tradition, here is the entire content of this article section as found in the Library of Babel: https://libraryofbabel.info/bookmark.cgi?article:10 . This shows that random processes can indeed generate information.

BOILERPLATE:

This is part 3 of me debunking this article, section by section: "What would count as ‘new information’ in genetics?" (https://creation.com/new-information-genetics)

This post covers the section titled "Let’s illustrate that information can increase and decrease". Here are parts 1 & 2:

1. https://www.reddit.com/r/debatecreation/comments/ek2pe7/lets_break_something/
2. https://www.reddit.com/r/debatecreation/comments/en4g4r/lets_break_something_part_2/

For the sake of honesty and transparency:

• I'm not an expert in any of the relevant fields. I'll probably make mistakes, but I'll try hard not to.
• I'm good at reading scientific papers and I'll be citing my sources -- please let me know if I omit one you think I should include. Please cite your sources, too, if you make a factual claim.
• If I screw up "basic knowledge" in a field, you can take a pass and just tell me to look it up. If it's been under recent or active research then it's not "basic knowledge", so please include a citation.

​

THE INTERESTING STUFF:

TL;DR & My position:

In this section the authors try to demonstrate that information can increase and decrease. I wish this were more exciting, but it's not: the authors make the same old logical errors they've made before. Their argument still holds no water because it still contains no definitions for its central terms. They still can't quantify information in the genome or tell when one genome contains more information than another, because they can't locate that information, because they can't define what it is. But that doesn't stop them from baldly claiming they can.

​

What quantity is the color red? Or the feeling of sadness?

An interesting question... But why are the authors talking about "ideas", anyway, when the article is about information in the genome?

​

These are concepts, and information is conceptual.

Oh. They're trying to equate "information" == "ideas or concepts". Even if we count this as a definition, it's practically useless because the authors don't define "ideas" or "concepts" (besides asserting elsewhere that they are both "immaterial"). They've just moved their lack of a definition one step back.

This "definition" -- if we can call it that -- is surprising because in this article the authors are trying to discuss information in the genome, which we know is made of material. For this "definition" to be in any way relevant to the article, the authors must assert that immaterial ideas literally reside in the material of the genome. Will they assert that (1) among the molecules which make up (deoxy-)ribonucleic acid, there are little "immaterial ideas" stuffed in here and there? Or will they assert that (2) the organization of the RNA / DNA itself constitutes the "immaterial ideas"? Or possibly that (3) the organization of the RNA / DNA within other biological / biochemical structures constitutes the "immaterial ideas"? Or that (4) the whole organism constitutes the "ideas"?

Well, of course they don't say. But let's still discuss these possibilities -- and please let me know if I've missed some!

1. Immaterial "ideas" are stuffed here and there among the molecules of RNA / DNA. Like pennies in the couch cushions. This is obviously ridiculous, and I don't think the authors actually believe or assert it. I only included this possibility to point out that as far as I can tell, it's the only alternative to the rest -- which all fail by the authors' own assertions.
2. If the organization of the RNA / DNA constitutes the "ideas" present in the genome. Wouldn't the ideas be contained in chromosomes, genes, pieces of genes, codons, or nucleotides, ripe for sequencing and study by biologists? Scientists routinely sequence parts of (and sometimes complete) genes and genomes, and they routinely use Shannon's information theory to study the results: (Shannon information in the genome of 25 species https://new.hindawi.com/journals/mpe/2012/132625/; information theory used to develop a method to tell non-human DNA contamination within human DNA https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2628393/ ). They routinely use these methods to study phylogeny and evolutionary biology: (Information theory in phylogenetics http://math.bu.edu/people/benallen/NewPhylogenetic.pdf ; the use of information theory in evolutionary biology). They routinely extract, modify, and splice genes and parts of genes into other genomes to figure out what genes to, and what they can be made to do: ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_engineering ). But the authors have asserted that "ideas" and "concepts" are immaterial -- which means "ideas" can't be made of RNA / DNA, and scientists should not be able to transfer "immaterial ideas" between organisms by merely transferring matter (genetic material) between them.
3. The organization of the RNA / DNA within other biological / biochemical structures constitutes the "ideas" present in the genome. Then aren't the "ideas" in the genome directly measurable by sequencing the genome (as above), studying its shape, and studying how it relates to other parts and processes within the cell? Scientists are studying all of this (functions of introns including some structural functions https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3325483/ , I think this covers the effects of the shape/structure of DNA https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4139847/ ), and this interpretation of "ideas" fails for the same reason as (2) above: the contents of cells are made of material, and are therefore not "immaterial ideas".
4. The whole organism constitutes the "ideas". This is a flimsy one: every organism is made of material, so obviously no organism is an "immaterial idea". Also, the genome contains all information needed to fully define a new "copy" of the organism, so the rest of the organism is redundant. Finally, the authors are writing about "information in the genome", which implies they think information exists at the genome level rather than at the organism level.
5. Am I missing other options here??

The authors clearly can't support options 2-4 (the ones which seem to have the most scientific credibility) due to their own assertions that "information" (or "ideas" / "concepts") is immaterial, and that it's found within the genome. This leaves the possibility that I've left out one or more possibilities where the authors assert "immaterial ideas or concepts" might exist within the genome, or the absurd possibility that immaterial "ideas" are somehow hiding among the molecules of RNA / DNA. Again, the authors have failed to explain where to find this "information", so I'm just trying to guess and there don't seem to be many good options for them...

With no good options above, if the authors can't tell us where to find "ideas" in the genome, how can they claim that these "ideas" are quantifiable? Don't they need to be able to point at or measure an "idea" before they can say how many "ideas" are in something, or that one thing contains more ideas than another?

​

[Red & the feeling of sadness] are concepts, and information is conceptual. Yet, paradoxically, it obviously can both increase and decrease in both quality and quantity!

How do you quantify ideas? How many ideas have you had in your mind so far today? This is the quandary: it’s self-evidently true that ideas are quantifiable in the sense that they can increase or decrease in number and clarity.

Yes, the authors admit that they have defined themselves into a paradox -- and now they're framing it as a deepity to make it sound like they've placed their argument on sound footing, and it's just too deep to fully grasp. They're trying to make a foundation of sand look like one of granite.

Here's the thing: if your definition of a thing leads to two mutually exclusive logical conclusions -- (1) that "information", "concepts", or "ideas" can't be quantified, and also (2) that we can tell when they increase or decrease in number (quantity) or which thing contains more of them (difference in quantity) -- then you've got a useless definition because you can't use it to identify the very thing it's supposed to define! But though it's possible the authors have done this, I don't think that's what's happened here...

Instead, I think the authors have given examples of things that can't currently be quantified -- perceptions/ideas like "red" and "sadness" -- and then without any justification at all they say that they can actually quantify them. That's it. We're supposed to take their word for it: the authors can count "ideas", and they can tell which of two things contains more "ideas". It's a fact, because they said so.

Their two examples are appeals to common sense, with no bearing on the question at hand: it seems that far fewer "ideas" should pass through a comatose man's mind than a waking man's mind; and it seems that far fewer "ideas" are in a short children's book than a long encyclopedia. So what? Even if these assumptions are correct, does that mean the authors are able to tell which of three versions of the same gene -- one from a human, one from a mouse, and one from a chimp -- contains more "ideas" or "information"? Does it mean they can tell which of two 1000-base pair DNA sequences contains more "ideas" or "information"?

No! They can't do squat, because they can't even decide what "information" or "ideas" mean, or how to locate them in the genome once they're defined, or how to quantify them once they're located.

​

Information is carried in so many complex ways (syntax, grammar, contextual clues, etc.) that it staggers the mind to contemplate actually trying to quantify it in an objective way. Yet this is what the skeptic asks us to do. This is an attempt at obfuscation to avoid grappling with the obvious fact that life is built upon the foundation of information. In fact, life is information.

And this quote is the authors' attempt at obfuscation to avoid grappling with their lack of a definition, and to gloss over their empty, unfounded implications that they can intuitively tell when one thing contains more information than another thing.

​

As is tradition, here is the content of the current article section as found in the Library of Babel: https://www.libraryofbabel.info/bookmark.cgi?article:9 . This shows that random processes can indeed generate what most people would call "information".

Based on /u/gogglesaur's post on /r/creation here, I ask why creationists seem to think that intelligent design deserves to be taught alongside or instead of evolution in science classrooms? Since evolution has overwhelming evidence supporting it and is indeed a science, while intelligent design is demonstrably just creationism with new terms, why is it a bad thing that ID isn't taught in science classrooms?

To wit, we have the evolution of intelligent design arising from creationism after creationism was legally defined as religion and could not be taught in public school science classes. We go from creationists to cdesign proponentsists to design proponents.

So, gogglesaur and other creationists, why should ID be considered scientific and thus taught alongside or instead of evolution in science classrooms?

If their was a flood where are all the outflow channels ripple marks coulees and pot holes Those are telltale marks of large scale landscape shifting flooding so why don't we see this features in abundance over the Earth everywhere how do proponents of flood geology explain this?

New Research on Animal Egg Orientation Shows “Unexpected” Diversity

I think Cornelius Hunter makes a convincing argument here.

We have the "Unexpected" finding in some fruit flies where the 'egg orientation' is stored in different genes for closely related species. Common ancestry should predict the same genes being used to dictate zygote orientation especially in closely related species.

So why do we have this exception or is there some reason we should expect this in common ancestry?

Moderator Note: Please try to refrain from calling the author a liar. This is one area I'd like to adjust tone on in here because accusations of lying are very common. The declarative statements are pretty much right out of persuasive writing 101 and if you call that a lie, everyone's a "liar". On the other hand, if you think there's a misleading quote mine or misrepresentation, try to make your case(s) in a concise and non-inflammatory manner.

BOILERPLATE:

This is part 2 of me debunking this article, section by section: "What would count as ‘new information’ in genetics?" (https://creation.com/new-information-genetics)

Here's part 1: https://www.reddit.com/r/debatecreation/comments/ek2pe7/lets_break_something/ . This post covers the section titled "What would a real, genuine increase look like?".

For the sake of honesty and transparency:

• I'm not an expert in any of the relevant fields. I'll probably make mistakes, but I'll try hard not to.
• I'm good at reading scientific papers and I'll be citing my sources. Please cite your sources, too, if you make a factual claim.
• If I screw up "basic knowledge" in a field, you can take a pass and just tell me to look it up. If it's been under recent or active research then it's not "basic knowledge", so please include a citation.

​

THE INTERESTING STUFF:

EDIT: I had initially called the authors liars, and the mod at r/debatecreation called this out as inappropriate. I'm on the fence -- sometimes brutal honesty is the only appropriate course of action -- but in the interest of erring on the side of caution and staying in the good graces of the community I've removed/rephrased those accusations. The evidence is here, people can come to their own conclusions.

FYI, nlm.nih.gov has been down for a couple days. Some of my citations are there (I linked them before the site went down) and you can't get to them right now, but I've decided to go ahead and post in case the site comes up soon. Sorry for the trouble, and if you really want I can try to find alternative sources for the currently broken citations.

TL;DR & My position:

We'll see the authors create an incredibly misleading analogy, and completely misrepresent the concept of randomness. I'll also shown that they can't tell intuitively when information is created or destroyed, or how much information is in a thing -- even though they strongly imply they can. I'll refute their assertion that "foresight" is needed for mutations to produce beneficial changes in the genome, and I'll expose their presupposition and resultant circular reasoning whereby they erroneously conclude that any meaningful output from a random process must be by design.

After all this, what, exactly, is left of the authors' argument? And how could they be so wrong about so many things? Either they tried to appear competent in fields where they're completely unqualified (genetics, information theory, probability theory, etc.); or they do understand these topics and they purposely misrepresented facts to convince their readers; or I'm somehow missing a third option.

Can anybody here justify believing a third option? If you can, I'm all ears...

​

Let's start with their "HOUSE" analogy...

The genetic code consists of letters (A,T,C,G), just like our own English language has an alphabet.

They are correct that the "ACTG" of DNA can (and should) be considered an "alphabet" whenever we talk about information in the genome. However, the authors are also implying that the problems of generating a valid English-language word at random, and generating a valid codon (3 nucleotides) in a genome at random, are of roughly the same difficulty -- when in fact the English word-generating problem is tremendously more difficult.

• The English alphabet has 26 letters, so randomly generating a length-N letter sequence from the English alphabet is a base-26 problem (there are 26^N possible sequences of length N). The genome has an "alphabet" of 4 nucleotides (ACTG), so randomly generating a sequence of nucleotides in a genome is a base-4 problem (there are 4^N possible sequences of length N). These problems have drastically different orders of magnitude as they scale. For example, there are over 11.88 MILLION 5-letter sequences possible using the 26-letter English alphabet (26^5), and only about 12,478 5-letter English words -- that means there's a roughly 0.1% chance of generating a real 5-letter English word at random. On the other hand, there are only 64 possible 3-"letter" sequences with the 4-"letter" nucleotide "alphabet" (4^3), and 60 of those code for an amino acid -- giving a roughly 93% chance that a randomly generated sequence of 3 nucleotides will be an amino acid codon. So, it's 893 times more likely to randomly generate a valid amino acid codon than it is to generate a real 5-letter English word -- this analogy is busted already, and we haven't even gotten close to the number of nucleotides needed to encode a normal protein (see next).
• Even if we assume (despite the authors implying otherwise) that each letter in "HOUSE" represents an amino acid and the whole word is a protein, the odds of generating the correct N amino acids in the right order (a specific protein) using the 20-letter amino acid "alphabet" are generally much better than generating a specific English word with N letters from the English alphabet. This is because a base-20 exponential grows a lot slower than one of base-26 -- especially when we're talking about proteins composed of hundreds of amino acids (median protein lengths are >100 amino acids: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1150220/). For example, there are 248 BILLION times more length-100 sequences of English letters than there are length-100 sequences of amino acids (26^100 / 20^100 = 248 billion). So for N = 100, which corresponds to a shorter-than-normal protein, this analogy is off by 11 orders of magnitude. That's the same as if the authors told you the Sun is 2 feet from the Earth, or 3.9 MILLION light years away (which is a few galaxies away)! How is this amount of error acceptable, even in an analogy?
• And we're not done yet -- as if it weren't bad enough already, the math continues to get worse for the authors' argument... Genetics shows that some (or perhaps many) amino acids in a protein can be exchanged with little or no effect on the function of the protein (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1449787/, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3130497/), similar to the word "HQVSE" being spelled wrong but still legible (you can still read that if you squint your eyes, right?). This drastically reduces the difficulty of the problem because it drastically increases the chances of a random mutation still resulting in a working protein, despite changing one or more amino acids in that protein. But did the authors even mention this problem with their analogy? Nope! They imply in their discussion of "nonsense words" that the target word must be spelled correctly -- but proteins can be "spelled" incorrectly and still work fine, and there are multiple ways to "spell" almost all the amino acids that make up proteins, so if this already-broken "HOUSE" analogy wasn't worthless before, it certainly is now.

​

There’s no real way to say, before you’ve already reached step 5, that ‘genuine information’ is being added.

Yeah -- and we'll never be able to say because the authors have rejected all existing definitions of information without giving us their own. In fact, they've asserted that "information is impossible to quantify" (see debunking part 1, linked at the top). If they can't quantify it, how in the world do they know that the information is added at step 5 instead of steps 1-4? How do they know that any information was added at all, in all the steps together? We can't tell because the authors have dodged defining the term -- yet they baldly imply that the information (or most of it) appears in step 5.

Let's show that the authors' unfounded assertion is unreasonable. What if we define "information" as "the inverse of the number of possible English words which could be made starting with the current letter sequence"? That's a reasonable definition because it's equal to the probability of randomly picking the correct English word, given what we know about the sequence so far. Well, here's how their example plays out with that definition. (I'm using the "Words With Friends" dictionary: https://www.morewords.com/words-that-start-with/h. Other dictionaries will give different results but I should be close.)

• Start with an empty sequence whose final length is unknown: there are 171,476 words in the English language, so the amount of information in an empty string is 5.8 millionths of a unit (1 / 171,476), because starting with nothing we can end up with any of the 171,476 possible words. (Under this definition of "information", an empty string contains information because we know it must form a word once all the letters appear.)
• "H": there are 6335 English words beginning with 'h', so the information in the string is now 158 millionths of a unit (1/6335) -- a 27x increase.
• "HO": 697 millionths of a unit (1434 words begin in 'ho') -- 4x increase.
• "HOU": 8 thousandths of a unit (126 words begin with 'hou') -- 11x increase.
• "HOUS": 9 thousandths of a unit (111 words begin with 'hous') -- 1/8x increase.
• "HOUSE": 9 thousandths of a unit (109 words begin with 'house') -- essentially no increase.

So, by my definition of "information" the 5th step actually adds the LEAST amount of information. But... the authors implied that step 5 added the most information, how could they be wrong?

It's because they either refused or failed to define their terms, so we're left to guess what "information" means -- and to choose our own reasonable definition, even if it proves the authors wrong. It's just ridiculous for the authors to claim to know whether and when information is created or destroyed when they can't quantify or even define "information" itself -- especially when it's possible to choose a reasonable definition that reaches the exact opposite conclusion from theirs.

​

But there’s an even bigger problem: in order to achieve a meaningful word in a stepwise fashion (let alone sentences or paragraphs), it requires foresight. I have to already know I want to say “house” before I begin typing the word.

Yeah, but that's not true in genetics: here's a striking example of how wrong the authors' assertion is. De novo gene origination is the process by which ancestrally non-genic (i.e. "junk DNA") sections of a genome mutate to suddenly become genic sections. In this manner, non-genic DNA can accumulate mutations beyond recognition over many generations without affecting the organism, and then -- bam! A mutation causes it to start coding for a protein or RNA, and it's not "junk" anymore (a survey of de novo gene birth https://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article?id=10.1371/journal.pgen.1008160, de novo genes identified & traced in yeast https://www.genetics.org/content/179/1/487 & https://mbio.asm.org/content/9/4/e01024-18 , evolution of new functions de novo and from existing genes https://cshperspectives.cshlp.org/content/7/6/a017996.full ).

So, yes, you and I have to know what we want to type before we start typing. But de novo gene origination shows that rule doesn't apply to genetics, and we've already seen that coding sequences can be "misspelled" quite badly and still work (multiple codons make the same amino acid, and amino acids can be replaced without ruining the function of the protein), so the authors can get rid of this concept of "foresight" -- it's not relevant to genetics. Mutations don't have a goal in mind, and more importantly they don't need one -- time, random chance, and the mechanisms of genetics are all that's needed to produce every possible genome.

​

What if you were told that each letter in the above example were being added at random? Would you believe it? Probably not, for this is, statistically and by all appearances, an entirely non random set of letters.

Argument from incredulity. Readers are supposed to say "Oh wow, 5 whole letters in a row that make an English word! What are the odds??". About 0.1% (same math as above). So, we should expect to see a correctly spelled English word appear about 1 in every 1000 times a 5-letter sequence is generated at random. I remember getting homework assignments in high school that were longer than that -- of course my teachers wouldn't have accepted random letter sequences, but my point is that the authors' argument from incredulity is fallacious. We've already seen that the "HOUSE" analogy is horrendously inaccurate, and now the authors are implying that 1 in 1000 is unreasonably long odds? People (and random processes) beat those odds every day -- and it's not a surprise, we expect this to happen, about 1 in 1000 times.

​

This illustrates yet another issue: any series of mutations that produced a meaningful and functional outcome would then be rightly suspected, due to the issue of foresight, of not being random. Any instance of such a series of mutations producing something that is both genetically coherent as well as functional in the context of already existing code, would count as evidence of design, and against the idea that mutations are random.

No! We've already discussed why "foresight" doesn't apply to genetics, and now the authors are trying to assert that random processes are NEVER expected to produce meaningful outcomes, and that it takes "foresight" to do so -- when in fact random processes are EXPECTED to produce meaningful outcomes at a specific rate, with no "foresight" at all. This stuff is taught in freshman level prob/stats, and the authors are consistently getting it wrong.

Based on this flagrantly erroneous assertion, the authors then presuppose that any meaningful outcomes we observe must be the result of design rather than randomness, when in fact many natural random processes routinely produce meaningful outcomes (mineral and ice crystals are highly ordered and naturally formed, for example). Under this presupposition, the authors can never question whether meaningful output from a random process is actually random -- they have assumed that it must be the result of design, and they rely on this assumption to conclude that it is the result of design (which is circular reasoning). Period. They're right because they said so. Sounds good to you, right?

By the same logic: I presuppose that I am Superman. Oh, you want to know if I can fly, dodge bullets, lift a train, etc.? I'm Superman, therefore of course I can!

Again, as proof that random processes can produce information, here's this section of the article as it appears in the Library of Babel: https://libraryofbabel.info/bookmark.cgi?article:8 . I wonder -- would the authors rather defend their position by arguing that their article contains no information, or by admitting that information can indeed be produced by random processes?

​

See the TL;DR for a summary of what's been debunked. Q.E.D.

I'll try to debunk another section again soon.

I'm going to try out requiring approval for posts. A few users here have made some decent posts only to later make some particularly bad posts and I'm not on here enough to catch it. However, I should be able to logon at least once a day and approve posts.

Posts like this would not make it out the gate and in my opinion it's less drama if it just isn't approved in the first place:

Question: Would anyone like to debate the evidence for The Creator?

As a more nuanced example, I would prefer a slight adjustment in tone for this one's title:

Do Creationists Lack Self-Awareness?

I think the phrasing of this question is inherently condescending. You could broach the same topic by saying something like, "Are Creationists Aware that Creation Science Isn't That Popular with Christians?" Again, it's nuanced but I think the original title is a little condescending and will probably make Creationists defensive from the start.

We'll see how it goes. If I get too far behind or it's just not working I can turn it back off. I'll try to update the posts guidelines later tonight. Thanks!

..or will that trigger the True Believers to rally the faithful to drive off the Blasphemers?

Your call. I am willing (and able) to present the case for creationism, but not in an echo chamber of hostility.

Why not examine the evidence with an open, scientific mind?

Mods, is this a rational debate subreddit, or a confirmation bias reinforcer? Do you want the evidence and case for creationism, or will you allow hecklers and disrupters to drive away reasoned, civil debate?

Relevant thread, entitled 'Creation apologetics in real life' from /r/creation

/u/JohnBerea posted an image-meme. It suspect it's a modification -- I'm not familiar with this set of images -- but the short description would be that a creepy, pale figure, dressed mostly black with a large cross around his neck, implied to be a creationist, who creeps out a rather normal looking family.

I infer that the message is that creationism is a fringe culture and that the obsession turns off normal people.

The comments made by /r/creation's residents are just strange. Were they not aware of this? Recent polling suggests that a mere 18% of the US population is true creationist -- or has other reasons for believing that humans have always existed in their current form for more outlandish reasons:

When asked the single-question version, just 18 percent of U.S adults say humans have always existed in their present form, while 81 percent say humans have evolved over time. By contrast, in the two-question approach, nearly one third of respondents (31 percent) say humans have always existed in their present form, and 68 percent say they evolved over time. These results suggest that some Americans who do accept that humans have evolved are reluctant to say so in the two-question approach, perhaps because they are uncomfortable placing themselves on the secular side of a cultural divide.

This also suggests to me that there is a significant slice of the population who may ascribe to creationism to virtue signal their faith, but will readily abandon the concept if given a more coherent middle ground. I wish I could get access to that survey data, because I'm interested in how the creationist numbers break up across ages, but alas, I cannot find it. I suspect that creationists, like Fox News viewers, tend to trend older.

So, do creationists overestimate their prominence and acceptance? I think so.

Simple question, what do you think is the best evidence for the flood in the rock record.

Paul, I'm looking to have discussions, don't bother telling me to read your blog creation.com. If you think there is a strong post there on this topic I'll happily review it, but chances are very good I've already read it.