This PRESUMES that we did “evolve” – something which is stongly opposed by the scientific evidence.
- It does not adequately explain the source information. where did the information contained in the DNA mocule come from
- It violates the 2nd law of thermodynamics in that it asserts that natural system go from simplicity to complexity, – something that we don not observe.
- It has no viable explanation of how Sex and genders came into existence”

It would be charitable to say that this post is just an ignorant rant, but actually in my experience it is deliberate lies and misinformation , because even the terminally ignorant should have managed to catch up with basic science by now:

1. “information” is a misnomer in this case, because basic information is everywhere and in everything that can behaviour in a logical yes/no mode; eg a light-switch, a mouse-trap, a heat sensor etc. The DNA 4-nucleotide sequence similarly codes for information about which amino-acid to dock with. Nothing mysterious about “information ” here. It is just logic and binary (or triplet) code.

2. This is the most egregious creationist propaganda of all. The 2nd Law applies to closed systems only. The Earth is an open system; have you not ever noticed the Sun, and how it bombards Earth with photons, driving photosynthesis and all life? Think of a mountain stream running downhill(entropy) ,-driving a waterwheel and doing work and creating order and purpose like being used to grind corn, turn a lathe or grinding wheel, and any number of other applications. This is how order borrows energy from entropy.

3. Males and females did not appear fully developed out of nothing; they gradually evolved in step with each other, starting from the horizontal gene transfer between primitive living cells by the ingestion of bacteria by bigger Protozoans eg Amoeba, for food. Some of these genes would have survived and become sex cells within the body of its predator , and fused with the predator’s genes, sometimes undergoing reduction division (meiosis), and fusing to form the first zygote (fertisised cell), which could have been “born” as the first individual created by primitive and accidental sex. From then on, it was all evolution until you end up with Barbie Doll and Action Man.

I think you need to learn some basic science.

I watched a documentary about a random mutation causing the weakening of the lower jaw, which in turn allowed for the skull to grow bigger, since the jaw bone could no loger pull on the skull plates. That extra skull space allowed for much larger brain size. At about the same time, another random mutation caused our thumbs to develop more detached from the rest of our fingers. This allowed for evolving a grip with much better precision that lead to better tool creation, etc.

“The pelvis in Australopithecus was shaped more to satisfy erect posture and bipedal locomotion than to allow increase in fetal size, which occurred much later, since the encephalization process was on the way only after the pelvis had taken more or less its present shape. Adjustments of the human female pelvis to the increased size of the fetal head are minor, compared with the adjustments to erect posture, because erect posture preceded encephalisation and was therefore first to make its demands on the pelvis.”

As a consequence of this, the increase in brain size during human evolution carried with it the corollary effect of relative neurological underdevelopment of humans at birth. For example, a colt can stand almost immediately after birth whereas a human requires typically a year or more to stand even unsteadily. The human, thus, requires extended care of parents until the teenage years. This has had wide and profound impact on human social evolution and development of marriage and the extended family.

A human starts off life as a single cell. By the time it is an adult it consists of ~100 trillion cells. Google for the number of connections in the human brain then tell us that an adult is not significantly more complex than an egg.

If you have never noticed that natural systems go from simple to complex then you have simply not been paying attention.

Can anyone provide links to information regarding evolving to run (rather than walk) and also regarding the mouse/jellyfish DNA item that Scarab mentions? Thanks!

To answer that we first have to define information.

DNA is just sequences of four nucleotides (I’m simplifying). If we extracted the DNA from a cell and left it on a warm bench then the DNA would just: curdle, harden, and generally just sit there. You could watch it for an eternity and it would just sit there, or maybe it would turn to dust and blow away.

But if you put that DNA in a cell that knew how to read that DNA and could produce proteins from that DNA, proteins that were useful to the cell – then you could see the impact of the information in the DNA. You could, perhaps, add a little jellyfish DNA into a mouse embryo and produce a mouse that glows green. (which has been done)

So its CONTEXT that matters, the information in DNA is defined by what it DOES for the cells that contain it. That is what determines the information in one arbitrary sequence of DNA from any other arbitrary sequence.

Furthermore the most useful way of thinking about what a sequence of DNA does for a cell is to consider how it contributes towards the relative reproductive success of the cells that contain it. In other words: its FITNESS.

Given that we know have a useful way of thinking about the information in DNA (its effects on FITNESS) we are now half way towards seeing how such information can be generated.

We know that errors occur when a cell duplicates its DNA, there is an extensive literature on the subject: read it. (Google is your friend, try DNA copy errors)

These errors are random with respect to fitness. Again consult the literature (google for Luria Delbrück). But we can see this intuitively because the changes are a result of ‘mechanical’ errors in the copying machinery.

What happens when there are small, random changes in a DNA sequence or if fragments of DNA sequences are duplicated?

The answer is: it depends.

What does it depend on?

It depends on the context. It depends on what the changes does to the cells that contain it. It depends on how it affects fitness.

As a reminder – fitness is how well a given organism does in competing against other organisms – specifically it is its relative success at breeding.

If a new sequence helps the organism create more viable offspring than other organisms in the population then there is a good chance that the relative proportions of organisms in the population that contain this sequence will rise. This process is called NATURAL SELECTION.

So we have variation in populations caused by random mutations. These mutations can have different effects on fitness and therefore can be subject to natural selection.

Natural selection will weed out sequences with less fitness and will increase the proportion of sequences with greater fitness.

Therefore we have a mechanism that can detect differences in fitness and that can increase fitness in a population.

Since we have defined information as a contribution towards fitness we can see a mechanism that increases information. That mechanism is random mutation plus natural selection – A.K.A. the theory of evolution.

My thanks for yet another great read, Professor Zimmer!

What is exciting about all this is to see how theories rise, are struck by new evidence and then we can refine our theories to the evidence. It is sometimes hard for people like me who only reads about it or watches documentaries to really keep track of what are the current theories and which ones have been discredited.

And when was the ability to control and carry fie thought to have occurred?

Brain size increased as the woods vanished. So, we’re not saying that causation is proved, only that it looks interesting. I mean, tons of things were happening in the mean time. Socialization might have kicked brain size expansion, aided by sexual selection. Getting good at throwing rocks might have helped kick the brain into planning. Which came first, fire, or a bigger brain? It all probably contributed.

I’m no Evolution expert. I do stuff with engineering and computers. We sometimes use genetic algorithms to find improved solutions to hairy and ill-defined multi-variable problems. Genetic algorithms are really good at this. You don’t have to tell the computer how to do the search. All you have to do is tell it how good an answer is. It’s amazing how few generations these searches take. So, genetics appears to be very good indeed at searching for new solutions. And death provides a persuasive feedback mechanism. So, uhm, death is a good thing. Who’d a thunk it.

Information theory does not say that new information can’t be generated.

As an Engineer, i can vouch for the 2nd Law not having been violated. The Earth isn’t a closed system. There’s plenty of energy from the Sun. High school chemistry shows that more complex stuff can form from simpler stuff. It happens.

And, as an Engineer, i can vouch for how products evolve. It’s done differently, yes. But engineers don’t design everything, or even very much, from scratch. It’s the search for better solutions, and keeping the stuff that worked. The “life was designed” argument doesn’t hold water because it doesn’t do much to distinguish Evolution from Design.

animals live in a malthusian world. carry capacity.

This PRESUMES that we did “evolve” – something which is stongly opposed by the scientific evidence. The theory of Darwinian/Macro evolution has many serious problem – to PRESUME that is is true is really poor science.

The problems for Darwinian/macro evolution include:
- It does not adequately explain the source information. where did the information contained in the DNA mocule come from
- It violates the 2nd law of thermodynamics in that it asserts that natural system go from simplicity to complexity, – something that we don not observe.
- It has no viable explanation of how Sex and genders came into existence

Prof. Louis Bounoure, Director of Research, National Center of Scientific Research said it well:
“Evolution is a fairy tale for grown-ups. This theory has helped nothing in the progress of science. It is useless.”

[CZ: Bounoure said no such thing, and never worked at CNRS.]