Information? Is this an answer???!!!
Awhile back I took a post from this blog, filled it with links and content from other blogposts and put it on top of a links list. I called it the !Ultimate Information Post. Devoted Darwinists do not particularly care for this and often accuse me of censorship. You can read their written accusations because they do it quite often. I ask you, if I am a censor would I let people continually accuse me of it, or would I erase those comments? Ah, Darwinists! Anyway, recently I decided to open up a thread for them to give me the answer to a simple question, one they have gagged on for years:
The Great Darwinist Information Invitation
"I have a challenge for Darwinists. Go ahead and present a valid natural source for information. "
Has this been answered? Nope. Of course the old "mutation and natural selection" was trotted out. Hmm. You see, you have to have information to build organisms that would be capable of mutation and enduring natural selection so that is not an answer at all. Then data was proposed and naturally that was rejected. Finally they began asking me questions instead of trying to answer. Here is where it had come down to at around comment 100 or so because I had become bored of their continual evasions and rabbit trails. So one of them gave me this:
- "Actually, you have all become boring. I would love to have people read
these comments and see how Darwinists try to weasel out of the question.
[...]
You have nothing to say. You cannot answer the question." (whatsit was quoting me)
You're the one not answering the questions, as any reader of this thread can tell very easily:
1. If you have a book with a certain amount of information in it and you buy another copy of the same exact book, you haven't gained any information. If you buy five copies of the same book and then buy another fifty copies of that same book, you haven't gained any information.
Agree?
2. It's fair to say that five editions of a book (even though each book still only has five chapters) collectively contain more information than five copies of any one edition. (see above example and details)
Do you agree?
3. Which contains more information: the DNA of four lion cubs from the same litter, or the DNA of a lion, a tiger, a panther and a jaguar added together? Consider what instructions the DNA contains, and what the result of those instructions would be.
You know you can't win this argument, don't you? That's why you have to run away and pretend to be "bored".
Thanks for conceding the argument."
Hmmm. I didn't see any answer in all that, did you? Is there any attempt to give me a natural source for information? Trust me, there is a trail of comments like this one, all apparently attempting to evade the question itself.
No, I am not being snarky, it is just that after 100 plus comments I hoped a Darwinist would identify a source of information from nature. There must be a talking rock or a singing stone or a pool of magic words and numbers somewhere or else my assertion (which is the scientific one) is that information only comes from intelligence. If we are organisms (mankind), we are also special organisms because we can think abstractly and be marvelously creative and I would also assert that we have a spiritual component. That component is longing for an answer to the meaning of life. Hopefully even though you understand that you can think up and pass along information, you are aware that you did not create yourself? If intelligence is inherent in all organisms (and it is) then intelligence was needed to create them. Enter God the Creator of the Universe and life and all that is in existence.
Atheism will basically tell you that you will eat and drink and then you die. Atheists will steal whatever moral code they like from the Bible and ignore the rest. They will live by situational ethics or whatever they can get away with or ? After all, if there is no God then there is no one to be responsible to and you can do as you please. This is why Darwinism is so important to Atheism, because without it you have to acknowledge a Creator and responsibility to that Creator.
Darwinism asserts that we have evolved from simpler forms (although they cannot explain where life comes from, either) and if you actually believe we are simply the result of chance bonkings of atoms and subatomic particles (oh, yes, they cannot tell you where matter comes from, either) then their thoughts are the thoughts they were evolved to think and they cannot help what they say because it is pre-determined by evolution! Think about that for a moment...if you think you can actually think...hmmmmm...do you actually believe you have free will? Or do you believe you have evolved?
While you are thinking (or being predetermined to think you are thinking) on that, let me clue you in to what real science is doing. It is accepting that DNA is a wonderful coding structure and trying to work within that structure to advance science and bring a better life to mankind, just as God intended man to do.
Sigh. So I am going to try to reason with you. If we know that man is intelligent and can pass information back and forth even without transferring material in the process, doesn't that mean that information is not material? Review the notepad and paper analogy. Then review basic statements about information:
The following statements about information are true:
- Information cannot be quantified perfectly because it is not material in form.
- Information containers can be quantified but the exact quality and quantity of the information within cannot be.
- Information within DNA can be associated with specific portions of the DNA string, which enables us to quantify to some extent and identify to some extent the information contained within DNA. But this is still a matter of identifying the container of information.
- No material or natural source for information has been identified. Information within the genome is pre-existent and it is lost, it is mutated or it is transmitted but it is never created.
I have given Darwinists ample time and space to deal with these things. To remind you of what the dictionary says (not a Creationist dictionary, just a dictionary):
n
–noun
1.
knowledge communicated or received concerning a particular fact or circumstance; news: information concerning a crime.
2.
knowledge gained through study, communication, research, instruction, etc.; factual data: His wealth of general information is amazing.
3.
the act or fact of informing.
4.
an office, station, service, or employee whose function is to provide information to the public: The ticket seller said to ask information for a timetable.
6.
Law.
a.
an official criminal charge presented, usually by
the prosecuting officers of the state, without the interposition of a
grand jury.
b.
a criminal charge, made by a public official under oath before a magistrate, of an offense punishable summarily.
c.
the document containing the depositions of witnesses against one accused of a crime.
7.
(in information theory) an indication of the
number of possible choices of messages, expressible as the value of
some monotonic function of the number of choices, usually the
logarithm to the base 2.
8.
Computers.
a.
important or useful facts obtained as output from a computer by means of processing input data with a program: Using the input data, we have come up with some significant new information.
b.
data at any stage of processing (input, output, storage, transmission, etc.).
Origin:
1350–1400; ME: instruction, teaching, a forming of the mind <>See inform1, -ation
How about Merriam-Webster?
in·for·ma·tion
noun \ˌin-fər-ˈmā-shən\Definition of INFORMATION
1
: the communication or reception of knowledge or intelligence
2
a (1) : knowledge obtained from investigation, study, or instruction (2) : intelligence, news (3) : facts, data b :
the attribute inherent in and communicated by one of two or more
alternative sequences or arrangements of something (as nucleotides in
DNA or binary digits in a computer program) that produce specific effects c (1) : a signal or character (as in a communication system or computer) representing data (2) : something (as a message, experimental data, or a picture)
which justifies change in a construct (as a plan or theory) that
represents physical or mental experience or another construct d : a quantitative measure of the content of information; specifically : a numerical quantity that measures the uncertainty in the outcome of an experiment to be performed
3
: the act of informing against a person
4
: a formal accusation of a crime made by a prosecuting officer as distinguished from an indictment presented by a grand jury
~
knowledge communicated or received concerning a particular fact or circumstance (DDC)
and
the communication or reception of knowledge or intelligence (MWO)
Okay, so it is obvious that whatsit is trying to take me down a rabbit trail. His intent is evidently to try to get me to accept containers of information as being the information itself? I am not entirely sure what he is attempting to accomplish but it is CERTAIN that he is NOT answering the question and in fact not one Darwinist commenter has an answer. For this reason I quit trying to play whatever reindeer games he is attempting to play.
Intelligent Design is real science involved in studying the makeup of organisms and in doing so asserting that they are designed, so those designs are worth studying and copying. Real science is learning to "speak" DNA and also learning to try to deal with mutations and fix them.
Now just to remind you that even bacteria are no help to Darwinists because their mutations are all negative:
Antibiotic Resistance of Bacteria: An Example of Evolution in Action?
Click to enlarge
Bacteria are single-celled microorganisms, and most
bacterial species are either spherical (called cocci) or rod-shaped
(called bacilli). The 3D rendering on the left shows bacilli bacteria.
These bacteria are being studied by evolutionary scientists with the hope that they will reveal secrets as to how molecules-to-man evolution could have happened.
But are bacteria really evolving?
Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria
Antibiotics are natural substances secreted by bacteria and fungi to kill other bacteria that are competing for limited nutrients. (The antibiotics used to treat people today are typically derivatives of these natural products.) Scientists are dismayed to discover that some bacteria have become resistant to antibiotics through various alterations, or mutations, in their DNA.Hospitals have become a breeding ground for antibiotic resistant bacteria. These bacteria proliferate in an environment filled with sick people who have poor immune systems and where antibiotics have eliminated competing bacteria that are not resistant.
Bacteria that are resistant to modern antibiotics have even been found in the frozen bodies of people who died long before those antibiotics were discovered or synthesized.1
History of Antibiotic Resistance
Antibiotics were first discovered through a providential experiment by Alexander Fleming in 1928. His work eventually led to the large-scale production of penicillin from the mold Penicillium notatum in the 1940s. As early as the late 1940s resistant strains of bacteria began to appear.2 Currently, it is estimated that more than 70% of the bacteria that cause hospital-acquired infections are resistant to at least one of the antibiotics used to treat them.3Antibiotic resistance continues to expand for a multitude of reasons, including over-prescription of antibiotics by physicians, non-completion of prescribed antibiotic treatments by patients, use of antibiotics in animals as growth enhancers (primarily by the food industry), increased international travel, and poor hospital hygiene.2
How Do Bacteria Become Resistant?
Bacteria can gain resistance through two primary ways:1. By mutation, and
2. By using a built-in design feature to swap DNA (called horizontal gene transfer)—bacteria share resistance genes.
An antibiotic kills a bacterial cell by simply disrupting a critical function. This is achieved in the cell in much the same way that a saboteur can cause a massive jetliner to crash by simply cutting the hydraulic lines.
Antibiotic resistance of bacteria only leads to a loss of functional systems. Evolution requires a gain of functional systems for bacteria to evolve into man.
The antibiotic binds to a protein so that the protein cannot function properly. The normal protein is usually involved in copying the DNA, making proteins, or making the bacterial cell wall—all important functions for the bacteria to grow and reproduce.
If the bacteria have a mutation in the DNA which codes for one of those proteins, the antibiotic cannot bind to the altered protein; and the mutant bacteria survive. In the presence of antibiotics, the process of natural selection will occur, favoring the survival and reproduction of the mutant bacteria. (The mutant bacteria are better able to survive in the presence of the antibiotic and will continue to cause illness in the patient.)
Although the mutant bacteria can survive well in the hospital environment, the change has come at a cost. The altered protein is less efficient in performing its normal function, making the bacteria less fit in an environment without antibiotics. Typically, the non-mutant bacteria are better able to compete for resources and reproduce faster than the mutant form.
Let’s look at a famous example to help clarify this. During the anthrax scare shortly after the September 11, 2001, attacks in the U.S., Ciprofloxacin (Cipro) was given to potential victims. Cipro belongs to a family of antibiotics known as quinolones, which bind to a bacterial protein called gyrase, decreasing the ability of the bacteria to reproduce. This allows the body’s natural immune defenses to overtake the infectious bacteria as they are reproducing at a slower rate. Quinolone-resistant bacteria have mutations in the genes encoding the gyrase protein. The mutant bacteria survive because the Cipro cannot bind to the altered gyrase.
This comes at a cost as quinolone-resistant bacteria reproduce more slowly.4, 5, 6 Resistance to this family of antibiotics is becoming a major problem with one type of bacteria which causes food poisoning. This bacteria increased its resistance to quinolones 10-fold in just five years.7
Bacteria can also become antibiotic resistant by gaining mutated DNA from other bacteria. Unlike you and me, bacteria can swap DNA. But this still is not an example of evolution in action. No new DNA is generated (a requirement for molecules-to-man evolution), it is just moved around. It’s like taking money from your left pocket and putting it into your right pocket—it doesn’t make you wealthier. This mechanism of exchanging DNA is necessary for bacteria to survive in extreme or rapidly changing environments like a hospital (or like those found shortly after the Flood).8
What Does It Really Prove?
The mechanisms of mutation and natural selection aid bacteria populations in becoming resistant to antibiotics. However, mutation and natural selection also result in bacteria with defective proteins that have lost their normal functions.Evolution requires a gain of functional systems for bacteria to evolve into man—functioning arms, eyeballs, and a brain, to name a few.
Mutation and natural selection, thought to be the driving forces of evolution, only lead to a loss of functional systems. Therefore, antibiotic resistance of bacteria is not an example of evolution in action but rather variation within a bacterial kind. It is also a testimony to the wonderful design God gave bacteria, master adapters and survivors in a sin-cursed world.
Are all bacteria bad? Visit www.answersmagazine.com/go/bacteria-good-or-bad to find out.
earned her doctorate
from Ohio State University in molecular genetics and spent six years as a
professor of biology at Mt. Vernon Nazarene University. She is now a
researcher and writer for Answers in Genesis-US, and she teaches online
courses for Answers Education Online.
Footnotes
- Thompson, Burt, Bacterial antibiotic resistance: proof of evolution? www.apologeticspress.org/articles/439. Back
- Antibiotic resistance: How did we get to this? the Fleming Forum, flemingforum.org.uk/slides/antibiotic_resistance.pdf. Back (1) Back (2)
- The problem of antimicrobial resistance, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, www.niaid.nih.gov/factsheets/antimicro.htm/ Back
- Heddle, Jonathan and Anthony Maxwell, Quinolone-binding pocket of DNA gyrase: role of GyrB, Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy 46(6):1805–1815, 2002. Back
- Barnard, Faye and Anthony Maxwell, Interaction between DNA gyrase and quinolones: effects of alanine mutations at GyrA subunit residues Ser83 and Asp87, Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy 45(7):1994–2000, 2001. Back
- For a more technical review of antibiotic resistance see Anderson, Kevin, Is bacterial resistance to antibiotics an appropriate example of evolutionary change? Creation Research Society Quarterly 41(4):318–326, 2005, www.creationresearch.org/crsq/articles/41/41_4/2005v41n4p318.pdf. Back
- Molbak, Kare, et al., Increasing quinolone resistance in Salmonella enterica serotype Enteritidis, Emerging Infectious Diseases 8(5), 2002, www.cdc.gov.mill1.sjlibrary.org/ncidod/eid/vol8no5/01-0288.htm. Back
- For more information on antibiotic resistance and natural selection see Purdom, Georgia, Is natural selection the same thing as evolution? in The New Answers Book, ed. Ken Ham, Master Books, Green Forest, Arkansas, 2006. Back
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