Merged (edited) General thoughts about Christianity and the bible

[JayUtah]

If a phone number is 867-5309 and it is transcribed that way many times, the information is contained in the sequence of numbers, not in any given digit. A single digit doesn't individually carry the information or meaning we attribute to the entire phone number.

If the number is mistranscribed as 867-5609, the fact that a new digit was selected at random from a set of ten digits does not mean the information conveyed by the entire phone number is not new.

You're just playing silly word games now.

 

[Rusty Tyler]

In fact, if there never was any new information, we all come from Adam and Eve, and if you take the rib story at face value, Eve probably had the same genes as Adam. So where do all the different genes for blond hair, red hair, brown hair, black hair, albinism come from in your view?

From the available genetic information.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

All those numbers came from the available set of numbers.
No new numbers were created. All phone numbers use a base ten system.

All DNA is made from strings of the same four nucleotides. Every animal that has ever lived has its long, long DNA sequence made from the same four building blocks.

 

[JayUtah]

From a set of AVAILABLE discrete values. (not new)

Answered above. You're equivocating on what "new" means and what "information" means with respect to the genome.

 

[JayUtah]

From the available genetic information.

Here is a nucleotide sequence.

CGTCA

Here it is repeated a few times.

CGTCA
CGTCA
CGTCA

Here it is with a random mutation

CGTGA

Is that sequence new with respect to the previously repeated values?

 

[Rusty Tyler]

You don't know what a de novo mutation is, do you?

Are you claiming that "de novo mutation" is new information?
You could be wrong.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

Chosen from AVAILABLE information.

Imagine phone numbers had millions of digits. Every number is "available". Some are valid. The great majority have never been dialled, let alone assigned.

 

[Rusty Tyler]

Is that sequence new with respect to the previously repeated values?

No.
It is a rearrangement of existing genetic material sequences.

 

[The Great Zaganza]

All those numbers came from the available set of numbers.
No new numbers were created. All phone numbers use a base ten system.

You can change how long the number sequence is.
The simplest organisms have hundreds of thousands of base pairs.
The largest are hundreds of giga base pairs.

Add to that the increased possibility of interaction between genes.
Add to that the interactions between organisms.

No, there is no limit to the variety of shapes life can take - no matter how complex, any new generation will be slightly different, adding more complexity.

 

[The Great Zaganza]

If you think that all the animals since the Flood have basically stayed the same and nothing new genuinely has evolved, you are choosing ignorance

 

[Olmstead]

"Information" itself is a silly word game. We observe increased genetic variety and increased genetic material. It happens. Trying to argue it into impossibility with vague terms is ridiculous.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

Are you claiming that "de novo mutation" is new information?
You could be wrong.

If I randomly change a digit in a million-digit phone number, how likely do you think it is that it's a new number that hasn't ever been dialled before? Pretty darned likely.

 

[Rusty Tyler]

Imagine phone numbers had millions of digits. Every number is "available". Some are valid. The great majority have never been dialled, let alone assigned.

Imagine?
All sorts of things can be imagined.
I imagine that Noah's ark was found on Mt. Ararat in Turkey.
Does that make it true?

 

[JayUtah]

No.
It is a rearrangement of existing genetic material sequences.

But the information is not contained in one nucleotide. The information lives in the sequence of nucleotides.

 

[Rusty Tyler]

"Information" itself is a silly word game. We observe increased genetic variety and increased genetic material.

Where did the "increased genetic material" come from?
Magically appeared?

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

Just being always base 10, doesn't mean you can't copy a number wrong. You could write one digit as another digit, you could accidentally skip a digit, write one of them twice. etc. Sure, they're still in base 10, but they can different than the set of existing phone numbers.

Well, the same applies to your genes. They're all essentially very long numbers in base 4. (No, seriously.) You can't end up with a digit 5 in there, and if you do, the dna repair will fix that back to base 4.

Besides, if coming up with new numbers there were impossible, the first common cold would have killed you. To figure out an antibody for a foreign protein (e.g., from a virus), your immune system starts rapidly trying random mutations of a variable gene, until it brute-forces a match for the foreign protein.

 

[Rusty Tyler]

The information lives in the sequence of nucleotides.

Therefore not new.

 

[Rusty Tyler]

Just being always base 10, doesn't mean you can't copy a number wrong. You could write one digit as another digit, you could accidentally skip a digit, write one of them twice. etc. Sure, they're still in base 10, but they can different than the set of existing phone numbers.

Yes, but no NEW numbers were used. All came from the original base ten set.

 

[JayUtah]

Therefore not new.

If the sequence of nucleotides is one that has never been seen before because one nucleotide is randomly changed, then the information contained in the sequence of nucleotides is new.

Your literally making an argument equivalent to saying the only way we can make new phone numbers is to invent new digits.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

Imagine?
All sorts of things can be imagined.
I imagine that Noah's ark was found on Mt. Ararat in Turkey.
Does that make it true?

Okay, stop imagining. Look it up: the order of magnitude of numbers of base pairs that make up human DNA. It's billions.