This article is an answer to comments posted by johan.smit .1978 on the article
http://www.news24.com/MyNews24/Just-open-your-eyes-20130121
Firstly, the phrase ‘genetic information’ is always thrown around by creationists at will and always claim all sorts of things about them. For example, they always claim that, for the theory of evolution to be true, ‘genetic information has to be added’ or ‘genetic information has to increase’. Then they'll trow lots of words around; Shannon Information; Algorithmic Information, Gitt Information; Dembski Information. Don't let them fool you. They just use sciency-sounding words to fool you.
Of course all their claims are untrue.
The theory of evolution does not state that, 'genetic information must increase', anywhere. All the theory of evolution requires is a change of genetic information and natural selection.
For example, read these comments from johan.smit.1978
Johan.smit.1978, January 21, 2013 at 15:41
“http://www.news24.com/MyNews24/Just-open-your-eyes-20130121
‘…..but his conclusion that this explains the origin of species was illogical IMO since it could never be proven that mutations lead to an increase in genetic information - a prerequisite for evolution.’”
Nope. It certainly is not. All the theory of evolution requires is genetic variation and natural selection. Nothing about ‘increases in genetic information’.
Johan.smit.1978, answer the following question: which organism has the ‘most genetic information’; a crocodile or an ostrich? A prokaryote or a eukaryote? Please provide the units in which you measure that ‘genetic information’.
johan.smit.1978, January 21, 2013 at 19:35
http://www.news24.com/MyNews24/Just-open-your-eyes-20130121
“@clive.doubell
Help me if I don't understand. Would you agree that an increase in genetic information is required for evolution e.g. from a microbe into a microbiologist? If not, why do scientists call single celled organisms 'simple' and multi celled organisms like yourself 'complex'”
Well, firstly, unicellular organisms consist of one little cell, they’re thus called ‘simple’ while multicellular organisms consist of more than one cell, they’re called complex.
As described earlier, creationists always claim all sorts of things about the ‘amount’ of genetic information, but they never want to define how the measure the amount of genetic information. To put it in terms everyone can understand: what are the units on the tape creationists ‘use’ to measure the amount of ‘genetic information’ to be able to claim that it ‘increases’ or ‘decreases’? How do they measure it? You’ll never get a clear answer, just lots of words.
It is really simple; an increase in genetic information is not required for evolution. For example, every cell in your body (you are an organism) is a eukaryotic cell. The same as that of a Bluebottle (Portuguese-Man O’War , a colony of eukaryotic cells).
Could you, Johan.smit.1978, please indicate whether a human or a Bluebottle has the most ‘genetic information’ and how do you measure it?
I’ll give you a hint, johan.smit.1978, you can measure ‘genetic information’ in different ways: I’ll mention two of them.
1. Number of genes (measurable). The organism with the most genes is a certain protozoan…a single cell. Does this protozoan have ‘more genetic information’ than humans?
2.Largest genome (measurable). The organism with the largest genome is the flower Paris japonica. Does it mean that the Paris Japonica has more ‘genetic information’ than humans?
So it’s really not the amount of DNA, or even the number of genes, that leads to complexity: it’s what they do that matters. That’s why I’m always really confused when creationists talk about ‘an increase in information’.
So, everyone else, next time a creationist talks about ‘more information’, realize that they use sciency-sounding words to pretend that creationism is science; just laugh at them and ask them how exactly they measure it. And ask them exactly how they measure the 'genetic information' in an African elephant and an Asian elephant to know which one of them has 'most genetic information'.
Disclaimer: All articles and letters published on MyNews24 have been independently written by members of News24's community. The views of users published on News24 are therefore their own and do not necessarily represent the views of News24. News24 editors also reserve the right to edit or delete any and all comments received.
