Creationist argument about DNA and information

[Giordano]

The "information" if DNA is not information like writing down your randomly generated bank pin on a PostIt note. The information contained within DNA is a record of positive and negative feedback loops operating for millions of years, two things humans in general find difficult to process mentally and AIG Creationists specifically reject.


Feedback loops. Millions of years. DNA is literally a palimpsest recording of those happening.

Excellent way of stating it.

In some senses DNA has information in it. But this was refined from randomness by natural selection: imagine in essence the base sequences began "random" and the sequences that don't work well were eliminated by natural selection, so the sequences that remain are the ones that do work. Therefore the "information" is only what remains from the initial random "non-information" after natural selection. You don't need a mind, but you do need something that can select based on some parameter present within only some of the initially random sequences: in this case totally non-self-aware none intelligent natural selection.

This "selection" of specific "information" from a wider possible range by natural forces happens all the time but we tend not to think of it in this fashion. If we take a flat rock, then toss it 100 times and it always comes to rest on a face and not on a edge, does the rock encode "information" inserted by an intelligence so it "knows" to not come to rest on an edge? In a sense it possess information, but this information is the stability imposed on gravity on the shape of the rock- it doesn't involve a consciousness at all. Did a mind have to insert in water the information to form a 6 sided snowflake? Only if you insist on believing, counter to all evidence, that the mind of god (or gods) created the entire universe.

As with most Creationist "insights" I suspect that the people who actually devise these kinds of arguments know that they are lying, but just rely on more ignorant people to believe and exponentially propagate them. I am often struck by how 99% of Creationists arguments against the TOE are absolute strawmen and rely on a complete lack of understanding of what the TOE really states.

 

[fuelair]

No. God created the Heavens and Earth in 6 literal days, and all the plant and animal kinds too. We know because it says so in the Bible.

Who you gonna believe - the inerrant word of God as written down by men who had no reason to lie (honest!), or modern science?

Or, as I like to say, the clearly errant and/or stolen (borrowed ) from other cultures bits of business that make up the religious farce called the bible. Not to mention borrowings from it and just made up **** that covers the koran.

 

[tsig]

Most are aware that the Answers In Genesis website gives arguments about creationism. One of their arguments is:

Christian: “DNA has information in it—the instructions to form a living being. And information never comes about by chance; it always comes from a mind. So DNA proves that God created the first creatures.”

The opposing answer they give is:

Atheist: “There could be an undiscovered mechanism that generates information in the DNA. Give us time, and we will eventually discover it.”

This seemed like a weak argument to me but I saw someone refute the meme version of this creationist argument using this same statement--that we don't know. So, I'm wondering if someone has a stronger refutation.

Water must have the information in it to form a snowflake so every snowflake is a special creation of god.

 

[GnaGnaMan]

Excellent way of stating it.

In some senses DNA has information in it. But this was refined from randomness by natural selection: imagine in essence the base sequences began "random" and the sequences that don't work well were eliminated by natural selection, so the sequences that remain are the ones that do work. Therefore the "information" is only what remains from the initial random "non-information" after natural selection. You don't need a mind, but you do need something that can select based on some parameter present within only some of the initially random sequences: in this case totally non-self-aware none intelligent natural selection.

The confusion of terms here is what makes the assertion in the OP effective.
There is information in the sense abstract sense defined by information theory and then there is "information" used in an everyday sense.
The word "randomness" also is used to mean different things which also tends to cause confusion.

 

[barehl]

http://www.skeptics.com.au/resources/articles/the-information-challenge/

I liked Dawkins' piece on DNA and information content. That's probably the best description of Shannon's theory for a non-cognitive system that I've seen.

 

[Son of Inigo]

Wow!

Thank you OP, for asking this question. I have been struggling for a couple of months on how to ask this question intelligently.

In my former life, I was a YEC, then moved to ID. It was forums like this one that helped me to move away from my fundamentalist upbringing into science based rational thought. But the last little niggle was the "DNA is information" argument. I just could not square that. But now I can!

A huge thank you to those that have answered this! Giordano, Jrrarglblarg, turingtest, RecoveringYuppy. If I missed you, I apologize.

Thank you for keeping the "E" in ISF!

 

[Giordano]

In thinking a bit more about this, I realized that there is a weak analogy to the famous Sherlock Holmes quote:

"When you have eliminated the impossible (base combinations by natural selection), whatever remains, however improbable, must be the (combinations that do work)"

 

[Darwin123]

Most are aware that the

Christian: “DNA has information in it—the instructions to form a living being. And information never comes about by chance; it always comes from a mind.

This hypothesis is completely invalid. One can give numerous where information is created in a single step without the direct participant of a mind.

Information is generated by a sequence of unintelligent or unmindful process without a single mind involved. The hypothetical presence of a mind participating near the beginning of such a sequence does not invalidate the fact that information is generated by many unintelligent processes.

So a scientist could give loads of counterexamples to this Creationist argument. Any one counterexample shows that the argument is wrong. I will provide one example from meteorology.

One example would be the information that describes the composition and geometry of a storm in the atmosphere of earth. The precise pattern of the storm can be modeled step by step all the way to near the beginning by a set of processes that have absolutely no mind involved. Classical mechanics and thermodynamics is sufficient to interpret the information that describes a storm even though the storm in its final stages is has a high information content. Meteorologists regularly forecast and diagnose the genesis of a storm without any hypothesizing the mind.

The first few steps in the genesis of a storm can be explained as 'random' noise. Computer models show that the genesis of any one storm is consistent with a set of hypothetical initial conditions that are random with regards to any mind.

The fact is that the meteorologist can't extract the initial conditions due to sensitivity dependence (e.g., chaos) merely shows how the initial conditions are random with respect to intelligent minds. ANY initial conditions will result in ONE storm according to classical physics.

It should be noted that the holy men described in the Bible claimed to know the mind of God using the weather. The fact that there was a drought was explained by Nathan as being caused by King David 'sinning'. The prediction was made that when Bathsheba was stoned, the drought would end. However, the drought ended and Bathsheba was very much alive. Nathan then explained the cessation of the drought by God's mercy. Apparently, God's mercy itself can be described as a 'random variation'!

 

[blutoski]

Every one of those phrases is an unproven or ill-defined assertion.
1) "DNA has information in it" - says who? What definition of "information" makes this true?

This is also accepted from a scientific point of view. DNA, RNA, and the associated proteins for replication are regarded as 'information systems and structures biochemistry'.

In this sense, they're correct.

Have a look at the Wikipedia entry on [Biochemistry]

The idea that DNA is information is mainstream science.

2) "the instructions to form a living being" - "instructions" assumes too much, it sneaks in the conclusion they are trying to reach. Does space contain the "instructions" (by way of gravity) to form planets? (Also, "living being" is a bogus category, since nothing DNA makes is living - which is a bogus category in the discussion meant to add an element of mystery.)

I think they're correct on this one as well. DNA is a recipe for making a human, broadly speaking.

3) " information never comes about by chance; it always comes from a mind." Again, assuming the thing we want to prove. It supposes there is a purpose, a goal that is achieved by following a recipe. Evolution tells us this isn't the case at all.

Yes, I think this is where they are incorrect. The premise "information never comes about by chance" is not substantiated.

4) "DNA proves that God created the first creatures" - how did they jump from "intelligence" to God? Aliens would do as well. Aliens that don't have DNA would fit all the conditions.

Agreed. It's an unjustified jump. If Premise 3 was true, it would only mean there was a designer. The Raelians think the designer is an alien. That's more plausible than a supernatural being.

 

[Eos of the Eons]

I've always thought of dna as a recipe book for our bodies to follow. I guess that may be too simplistic:

DNA gets used for more than making proteins. Much DNA is transcribed directly to functional RNA. Other DNA acts to regulate genetic processes. The physical properties of the DNA and RNA, not any arbitrary meanings, determine how they act.

http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB180.html

However, we contain genes that can be described as "50% plant". So how did we become human with plant DNA?

This is the part creationists refuse to learn about. Mutations, good ones, led to us to being as we are now, and it took a darn long time for that language to get written.

For example, consider the human/chimp divergence, one of the most well-studied evolutionary relationships. Chimpanzees and humans are thought to have diverged, or shared a common ancestor, about 6 Mya, based on the fossil record (Stewart and Disotell 1998). The genomes of chimpanzees and humans are very similar; their DNA sequences overall are 98% identical (King and Wilson 1975; Sverdlov 2000). The greatest differences between these genomes are found in pseudogenes, non-translated sequences, and fourfold degenerate third-base codon positions. All of these are very free from selection constraints, since changes in them have virtually no functional or phenotypic effect, and thus most mutational changes are incorporated and retained in their sequences. For these reasons, they should represent the background rate of spontaneous mutation in the genome. These regions with the highest sequence dissimilarity are what should be compared between species, since they will provide an upper limit on the rate of evolutionary change.

Given a divergence date of 6 Mya, the maximum inferred rate of nucleotide substitution in the most divergent regions of DNA in humans and chimps is ~1.3 x 10-9 base substitutions per site per year. Given a generation time of 15-20 years, this is equivalent to a substitution rate of ~2 x 10-8 per site per generation (Crowe 1993; Futuyma 1998, p. 273).

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section5.html

 

[ThunderChunky]

Yes, I agree with AIG and others in this thread that DNA contains information. But then AIG falls apart. We know DNA is subject to random mutations. Do those new strands of DNA not contain information? If they try to make the claim that they don't then we have to ask how those random mutations aren't random and how they manage to avoid states that represent information. That becomes a very hard claim to justify since every mutation is just a chemical reaction without any insight in to the fact that the DNA is encoding proteins. Further the chemical reaction that is the mutation can't know whether it's impact is going to be good or bad, sometimes that can't be known for generations. And the exact same mutation/chemical reaction at some other point in the DNA will have an entirely different effect. So how could chemical reactions know what they'd need to know to avoid producing information?

Creationists also like to argue that mutations can only "break" or "destroy" DNA information and never create entirely new information. Of course, the simple mechanism of gene duplication refutes this notion. Not all layman know about it though, so they can be fooled by nonsense arguments.

 

[Darwin123]

Creationists also like to argue that mutations can only "break" or "destroy" DNA information and never create entirely new information. Of course, the simple mechanism of gene duplication refutes this notion. Not all layman know about it though, so they can be fooled by nonsense arguments.

I think it would be best to answer the question without referring to 'mutations'. In the computational sense, de novo mutations do not add information to a biological population.

De novo mutations do not add information to a population. Natural selection adds information to the system. A new species can manifest itself in principle without a single de novo mutation occurring within the period over which the species emerges. The new species can emerge by a recombination and natural selection.

This type of evolution is limited. A new class of animals would clearly involve some de novo mutations somewhere in their evolution. However, to make a closely related species does not require a constant stream of de novo mutations. The genetic variation required to make a new species at a particular time may have been generated by de novo mutations that occurred millennia before environment was suitable to form a new species.

So it isn't really a matter of de novo mutations making information. De novo mutations are random, so they can be said to destroy some information. However, natural selection acts on the descendants of the de novo mutations. The natural selection makes clearly distinguishable patterns by separating allele distributions in space and time. The clearly distinguishable patterns are called information.

Information does not require a mind. It requires differential reproduction and mortality. In other words, information requires 'selection' in the most general sense.


The emergence of a cline without artificial breeding shows that information can be created without the participation of a mind. Clines have information that is not present in the original homogeneous species. The gradation of gene frequencies from one side of the habitat to the other is information that was not generated by any designer.


A cline is generated by natural selection that separates alleles in an inhomogeneous habitat. The geographic separation of alleles is information that is not present without natural selection. Even if the cline is not extreme enough to satisfy someone’s definition of species, the cline itself includes information that would not have been attainable in the original species. Even if there were no de novo mutations between the original species and the cline, the cline itself contains information attainable in the original species.

The addition of de novo mutations can greatly amplify difference between individuals in the original cline. However, de novo mutations are not necessary for mere increase in information. Recombination and natural selection of alleles in different parts of an inhomogeneous environment are more than sufficient to make that Creationist hypothesis invalid.

Thus, it is unnecessary to distinguish between microevolution and macroevolution to show that the Creationists hypothesis is false. Just the emergence of any cline in the last few thousand years is sufficient to show that the Creationists hypothesis is invalid.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cline_(biology)
‘In biology and ecology, an ecocline or simply cline (from Greek: κλίνω "to possess or exhibit gradient, to lean") describes an ecotone in which a series of biocommunities display a continuous gradient.[1] The term was coined by the English evolutionary biologist Julian Huxley in 1938.
More technically, clines consist of ecotypes or forms of species that exhibit gradual phenotypic and/or genetic differences over a geographical area, typically as a result of environmental heterogeneity. Genetically, clines result from the change of allele frequencies within the gene pool of the group of taxa in question.[2][3][4] Clines may manifest in time and/or space.’

 

[CapelDodger]

In thinking a bit more about this, I realized that there is a weak analogy to the famous Sherlock Holmes quote:

"When you have eliminated the impossible (base combinations by natural selection), whatever remains, however improbable, must be the (combinations that do work)"

Must be a combination that has worked so far.

There's a weak analogy to Michaelangelo saying the statue is inside the marble - sculpture is taking off the stuff around it.

 

[Planigale]

I think it would be best to answer the question without referring to 'mutations'. In the computational sense, de novo mutations do not add information to a biological population.

De novo mutations do not add information to a population. Natural selection adds information to the system. A new species can manifest itself in principle without a single de novo mutation occurring within the period over which the species emerges. The new species can emerge by a recombination and natural selection.
This type of evolution is limited. A new class of animals would clearly involve some de novo mutations somewhere in their evolution. However, to make a closely related species does not require a constant stream of de novo mutations. The genetic variation required to make a new species at a particular time may have been generated by de novo mutations that occurred millennia before environment was suitable to form a new species.

So it isn't really a matter of de novo mutations making information. De novo mutations are random, so they can be said to destroy some information. However, natural selection acts on the descendants of the de novo mutations. The natural selection makes clearly distinguishable patterns by separating allele distributions in space and time. The clearly distinguishable patterns are called information.

Information does not require a mind. It requires differential reproduction and mortality. In other words, information requires 'selection' in the most general sense.


The emergence of a cline without artificial breeding shows that information can be created without the participation of a mind. Clines have information that is not present in the original homogeneous species. The gradation of gene frequencies from one side of the habitat to the other is information that was not generated by any designer.


A cline is generated by natural selection that separates alleles in an inhomogeneous habitat. The geographic separation of alleles is information that is not present without natural selection. Even if the cline is not extreme enough to satisfy someone’s definition of species, the cline itself includes information that would not have been attainable in the original species. Even if there were no de novo mutations between the original species and the cline, the cline itself contains information attainable in the original species.

The addition of de novo mutations can greatly amplify difference between individuals in the original cline. However, de novo mutations are not necessary for mere increase in information. Recombination and natural selection of alleles in different parts of an inhomogeneous environment are more than sufficient to make that Creationist hypothesis invalid.

Thus, it is unnecessary to distinguish between microevolution and macroevolution to show that the Creationists hypothesis is false. Just the emergence of any cline in the last few thousand years is sufficient to show that the Creationists hypothesis is invalid.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cline_(biology)
‘In biology and ecology, an ecocline or simply cline (from Greek: κλίνω "to possess or exhibit gradient, to lean") describes an ecotone in which a series of biocommunities display a continuous gradient.[1] The term was coined by the English evolutionary biologist Julian Huxley in 1938.
More technically, clines consist of ecotypes or forms of species that exhibit gradual phenotypic and/or genetic differences over a geographical area, typically as a result of environmental heterogeneity. Genetically, clines result from the change of allele frequencies within the gene pool of the group of taxa in question.[2][3][4] Clines may manifest in time and/or space.’

In support of this placental mammals like most of you but not like the Planigale exist because of retroviral oncogenes that have become integrated into the placental mammal genome. These oncogenes allow the formation of the syncytial cells of the placenta. A new gene was brought into a primitive mammal via a virus. Mitochondrial genes are thought to be attributable to incorporation of bacterial DNA in a primitive Eukaryote cell. This cross species transfer of genes and recombination is much more common in prokaryotes (bacteria). Some viruses can carry fragments of genes between organisms.

 

[Darwin123]

In support of this placental mammals like most of you but not like the Planigale exist because of retroviral oncogenes that have become integrated into the placental mammal genome.

This mechanism wasn't precisely what I meant but it demonstrates what I was try to say. I was talking about the recombination caused by meiosis and fusion. In other words, I was talking about SEX.

The recombination occurs every generation in animals that whose reproduction is obliged to be sexual. However, what you describe is lateral gene transfer. No gene was created. Furthermore, there was no direct exchange of genes between individuals of the same species. Yet, there has been a change in the genome due to the activities of a virus.

There was no creation of a new gene by a de novo mutation in the example that you gave. The gene was transplanted by a virus, outside the animal kingdom. Yet, this inherited variation may have been in the sequence of events that caused the placental mammals to emerge.

Thanks, your example made me laugh. The reason I laughed is because I don't know whether to call it a mutation or a recombination. It isn't really a de novo mutation and it really isn't just recombination. However, it clearly contributed to a macroevolutionary transition. I briefly considered calling it virus/mammal sex!

The information in this case was not 'caused' by a de novo mutation. It was caused by lateral gene transfer followed by natural selection. The transfer of the gene was random in every meaningful sense of the word. Once the gene was transferred, it was copied again and again the 'normal' way: by meiosis. Natural selection amplified the gene by selecting out those individuals where the gene did not help reproduction.

One can argue that this sort of 'inherited variation' is a de nova mutation caused by a virus. It was a random variation, but it wasn't a mutation. The gene wasn't really 'created' by the mutation but was transplanted. If one argues this way, then one has to accept the fact that not all steps in evolution involve a de novo mutation in the formal sense.

There are other inherited but random changes that don't precisely fit any formal definition of mutation. Gene duplications are random and contribute to evolution. However, some scientists prefer not to refer to gene duplications as mutations.

Darwin's original publications left us lots of wiggle room. He referred to the important changes as variations, not mutations. This term is very general. The word mutation doesn't get used until decades later. Maybe scientists should bring back the term variations. That way, we could refer to both recombination and mutation as variations. When in doubt, as in the case you described, we can simply call it a variation.

Margolus describes symbiosis as a sort of change that contributes to evolution. In a way, your oncogenes formed a symbiotic relation with a mammal.

 

[RussDill]

Most are aware that the Answers In Genesis website gives arguments about creationism. One of their arguments is:

Christian: “DNA has information in it—the instructions to form a living being. And information never comes about by chance; it always comes from a mind. So DNA proves that God created the first creatures.”

The opposing answer they give is:

Atheist: “There could be an undiscovered mechanism that generates information in the DNA. Give us time, and we will eventually discover it.”

This seemed like a weak argument to me but I saw someone refute the meme version of this creationist argument using this same statement--that we don't know. So, I'm wondering if someone has a stronger refutation.

What I find comical about this is that the person giving the answer has to somehow be an atheist, and not, say a biologist or geneticist, the type of person you'd actually want to ask about DNA.

Anyway, other's have already pointed at some good resources, and there are plenty natural of examples of information being generated without a mind. Take for instance a river, the information generated by rain falling on a landmass is very close to the most efficient path for the water to reach the lowest point. Planetary orbits are certainly not "random" and after billions of years, are in a quite stable configuration. Attempting to compute stable configurations for many planetary bodies is a difficult problem.

 

[Dave Rogers]

This mechanism wasn't precisely what I meant but it demonstrates what I was try to say. I was talking about the recombination caused by meiosis and fusion. In other words, I was talking about SEX.

Well, no wonder Christian fundamentalists object.

Dave

 

[stanfr]

What I find comical about this is that the person giving the answer has to somehow be an atheist, and not, say a biologist or geneticist, the type of person you'd actually want to ask about DNA.

Anyway, other's have already pointed at some good resources, and there are plenty natural of examples of information being generated without a mind. Take for instance a river, the information generated by rain falling on a landmass is very close to the most efficient path for the water to reach the lowest point. Planetary orbits are certainly not "random" and after billions of years, are in a quite stable configuration. Attempting to compute stable configurations for many planetary bodies is a difficult problem.

Yes, but that is not information in the sense of a "code" The creationist argument, as I understand it, is that no example can be given of coded information generated naturally. Since I know nadda about genetics, my google search of the issue immediately brought up Perry Marshalls' page cosmicfingerprints.com, in which he claims he debated skeptics for a zillion posts on infidels.org and (of course) nobody was able to refute him (how self-serving...) I am totally cool with evolution and I think even if you were to agree that DNA is coded information it most certainly doesn't prove an intelligent designer--however, at least in my brief research I haven't seen anyone counter his argument that it is the *only* coded info in nature, and that gravity, rivers etc don't fit the bill. I'd like to see that addressed here, preferably in under 10,000 responses...

 

[turingtest]

Yes, but that is not information in the sense of a "code" The creationist argument, as I understand it, is that no example can be given of coded information generated naturally. Since I know nadda about genetics, my google search of the issue immediately brought up Perry Marshalls' page cosmicfingerprints.com, in which he claims he debated skeptics for a zillion posts on infidels.org and (of course) nobody was able to refute him (how self-serving...) I am totally cool with evolution and I think even if you were to agree that DNA is coded information it most certainly doesn't prove an intelligent designer--however, at least in my brief research I haven't seen anyone counter his argument that it is the *only* coded info in nature, and that gravity, rivers etc don't fit the bill. I'd like to see that addressed here, preferably in under 10,000 responses...

What falsifiable criteria does he use to distinguish between "coded" and "uncoded" information? This sounds to me like the sort of begging-the-question characterization that someone would use which would allow him to claim he's never been refuted in debate.

 

[stanfr]

What falsifiable criteria does he use to distinguish between "coded" and "uncoded" information? This sounds to me like the sort of begging-the-question characterization that someone would use which would allow him to claim he's never been refuted in debate.

Good question, im not an expert in information theory, but some of this is addressed in a podcast of Perry's debate with PZ Myers:

http://cosmicfingerprints.com/pz-myers/

PZ seems to concede that its a code, but that original life was just chemistry (echoing some of the comments early in this thread)
It's a fun read, especially the comment section where Perry gets in an argument with a YEC.