Missing genetic information refutes neo-Darwinism

[wogoga]

Originally Posted by wogoga

It is a fact that the information of the genetic make-up of a human is a far cry from what is needed in order to transform a fertilized egg only into a human body, let alone into a person with intelligence and consciousness.

There are two approaches to this problem:

1) The dogmatic approach either ignores (i.e. psychologically suppresses) the argument or assumes a miraculous (logically impossible) information increase during ontogensis.

2) The logically consistent (i.e. scientific) approach leads to the simple conclusion, that apart from the material information another kind of information must exist.

Nowadays, most personal computers have a primary storage (RAM) of around 1 gigabyte. I don't know what the information of the used parts of the human genome is, but I suppose that this information can be compressed to less than 0.1 gigabyte, or maybe even to less than 0.01 gigabyte.

"The estimated number of genes in the human genome has been repeatedly revised downward since the completion of the Human Genome Project; current estimates place the human genome at just under 3 billion base pairs and about 20,000–25,000 genes. A recent Science article gives a final number of 20,488, with perhaps 100 more yet to be discovered." (Wiki)

"Broadly, the science of functional genomics has developed widely accepted techniques to characterize protein-coding genes, RNA genes, and regulatory regions. In the genomes of most plants and animals, however, these together constitute only a small percentage of genomic DNA (less than 2% in the case of humans). The function, if any, of the remainder remains under investigation. Most of it can be identified as repetitive elements that have no known biological function for their host (although they are useful to geneticists for analyzing lineage and phylogeny). Still, a large amount of sequence in these genomes falls under no existing classification other than 'junk'." (Wiki)

"Nuclear genome sizes are well known to vary enormously among eukaryotic species. In animals they range more than 3,300-fold, and in land plants they differ by a factor of about 1,000." (Wiki)

"In order to store the entire human genome on a computer without compression would require around 3,000,000,000 / 4 = 750,000,000 bytes of storage or 750 megabytes. The human genome requires 750 megabytes of storage compared to 1,500 megabytes of storage for Windows XP. Microsoft’s latest operating system requires twice the storage space than the genetic blueprint of the human species. This does not imply that Windows XP is more advanced or complex than the human genome, in fact, there is little correlation between the complexity of an organism and the length of its DNA sequence. A simple creature known as amoeba dubia has a genome that is over 200 times larger than the human genome." ('Man vs. Windows XP', tmsoft.com)

The belief that, despite all evidence to the contrary, (mostly repetitive) junk DNA represents information concerning the human body, instinctive behaviour, intelligence and consciousness is comparable to the belief in logically impossible miracles. Thus the concept 'functional DNA' ("less than 2% in the case of humans") is the relevant genetic information of a human. Even without compression it turns out to be less than 15 megabyte (i.e. less than one percent of Windows XP). This is less than 1 kilobyte per gene.

Maybe even more than in the case of software, there is a lot of evidence of inefficient use of this genetic information. Yet there is not even the slightest hint of how additional information concerning a human being could arise out of these 20,000 genes during ontogenesis.

If it is true that out of these 20,000 genes "we probably make at least 10 times that number of different proteins", then the genetic information per protein reduces to less than 100 bytes. One can dispute whether 100 or 1,000 bytes are enough to determine folding and behaviour of proteins, but we can be sure that this information is not enough to describe in a halfway complete way a protein capable of carrying out several tasks.

"For an enzyme to develop in a cell, various specific tasks (e.g. the complex transcription initiation) have to be carried out. If every task required a specific enzyme type, every enzyme type would require several other types, something that is logically impossible. One concludes that many enzymes are able to carry out several tasks. This hardly can be explained by reductionist causal laws, as even one task depends on various conditions, such as e.g. 'allosteric' changes in the enzyme form." ('The Psychon Theory', 'Arguments against Reductionism')

So if we cannot even be sure that there is enough genetic information in order to determine all the proteins working in our body, then it becomes (sorry for the expression) completely absurd to assume that there is enough genetic information for the human body with all its anatomical features, let alone for human intelligence and consciousness.

Therefore, neo-Darwinism is refuted inasfar as it excludes non-material information. There remain however at least these three logically viable hypotheses:

1) The missing information comes from God
2) The missing information comes from morphic fields (Rupert Sheldrake)
3) The missing information comes from psychons (the 'units' of evolution)

The psychon hypothesis leads to the most and the most precise predictions (e.g. demographic saturation).

Cheers, Wolfgang

[Normal Dude]

For folks who don't know, this is the original thread.

http://www.internationalskeptics.com...t=90266&page=2

Wolfgang seems to have started a new thread so that he can try to dodge the awkward questions posed to him in the previous.

So, Wolfgang, do you care to answer those questions?

You still haven't told me what your definition of neodarwinism is.

[Yiab]

What about the fact that gene expression will have extremely different large-scale results depending on the environment the genes are situated in? The fact that a fertilized human egg grows into a human shape within the womb of a human mother (or an environment almost identical to it) is a necessary part of the process, as is the nutrition transferred to the growing fetus through the umbilical cord.

Also, how precisely does one measure how much information is "necessary to transform a fertilized egg into a human body"?

[AK-Dave]

Without reading anything in the other thread, I'm sure I can summarize:

Person with little to no understanding of developmental biology can't understand how our current understanding of biology can explain evolution or development.

Am I right?

Too bad PZ Myers doesn't have time to participate in this forum. Wogoga, why don't you try discussing this with someone who is an expert in developmental biology, over on http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/.

-David

[Normal Dude]

Originally Posted by AK-Dave

Without reading anything in the other thread, I'm sure I can summarize:

Person with little to no understanding of developmental biology can't understand how our current understanding of biology can explain evolution or development.

Am I right?

You are pretty much spot on. His entire genetic argument is basically one big argument from ignorance.

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Originally Posted by Wogoga

It is a fact that the information of the genetic make-up of a human is a far cry from what is needed in order to transform a fertilized egg only into a human body, let alone into a person with intelligence and consciousness.

Ah yes, argument from it is a fact that.

Quote:

Therefore, neo-Darwinism is refuted inasfar as it excludes non-material information. There remain however at least these three logically viable hypotheses:

1) The missing information comes from God
2) The missing information comes from morphic fields (Rupert Sheldrake)
3) The missing information comes from psychons (the 'units' of evolution)

You forgot:

4) This missing information is in your brain.

~~ Paul

[Soapy Sam]

English alphabet, 26 letters.
English dictionary, 100,000 words.
English literature, more than a few books.

How is this possible?

[Garrette]

Originally Posted by Soapy Sam

English alphabet, 26 letters.
English dictionary, 100,000 words.
English literature, more than a few books.

How is this possible?

Neo-Shakespearean deceit.

[Dr Adequate]

Quote:

It is a fact that the information of the genetic make-up of a human is a far cry from what is needed in order to transform a fertilized egg only into a human body, let alone into a person with intelligence and consciousness/

You say that this is a fact.

Who found out that this fact is true?

What evidence did they supply for the truth of this fact?

How did they calculate how much genetic material is necessary for human development?

Why haven't I ever heard of this superlative genius?

[The Atheist]

Originally Posted by Soapy Sam

English alphabet, 26 letters.
English dictionary, 100,000 words.
English literature, more than a few books.

How is this possible?

Originally Posted by Garrette

Neo-Shakespearean deceit.

IDiot PWND.

Way to go, you two. Jointly nominated - you might have to share the $20.



(You guys should team up more often, that's just like one of those classic moments when you're laughing as hard as you can, THEN Groucho turns up. Made my morning, that has. Won't stop him, though - carry on.)

[DavidS]

Originally Posted by Paul C. Anagnostopoulos

4) This information in your brain is missing.

Fixed it for you

[Earthborn]

Originally Posted by wogoga

So if we cannot even be sure that there is enough genetic information in order to determine all the proteins working in our body, then it becomes (sorry for the expression) completely absurd to assume that there is enough genetic information for the human body with all its anatomical features, let alone for human intelligence and consciousness.

Obviously true, but this is only criticism against the supersimplistic ultra-gene based analogy that the genome can be seen as a "computerprogram" describing how to build an organism. Even Richard Dawkins -- champion of the gene centered view of evolution -- does not believe in such a thing. In the BBC documentary 'The Blind Watchmaker' (after 25 mins) he explicitely mentions that idea that the genome is a detailed description of all the intricacies of an organism is misleading, and a better analogy is that of a recipe.

If you think that the genome is supposed to describe an organism in all its intricacies, then there obviously isn't enough information in the genome to do that. But no one knowledgeable in this area claims that it does. That of course leaves open the issue of how the organism is formed in such a way that it resembles its parent. I think it is a problem for neo-Darwinism, but I don't think it is as large a problem as you think it is. If this information doesn't come directly from the genes, perhaps the information is provided by the environment in which the organism develops. The womb for example could be an environment in which only a limited number of developmental paths are possible, and may provide environmental stimuli to steer development in particular directions.

[bjornart]

Does this mean that plants and such, who have lots and lots of genes, but don't have brains, have to have these genes because God doesn't GAF about their development?

[Earthborn]

Originally Posted by Soapy Sam

English alphabet, 26 letters.
English dictionary, 100,000 words.
English literature, more than a few books.

Your analogy would be valid if you argued that all English texts consisted of 20 000 words, and that the few percent that differ between texts were enough to account for all possible variation in English.

[rudar]

plus to claim that all the information in the genome can be stored in x MB uncompressed is flawed, in that that's only true once one has restricted the possibilities to ATGC... To store all the information even about the structure of those bases would take a lot more than 2 bits per base pair, so your xMB description of the genome is *hugely* compressed right there.

If you want to continue with the computer analogy, it's more like saying ~/.bashrc is only 2kB in size, and that's not nearly enough to define how my computer works, so clearly god must intervene every time I log in, while completely overlooking the information coded in the kernel, in /bin, in /usr, and everywhere else.

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Originally Posted by DavidS

Fixed it for you

Yes, thank you.

~~ Paul

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Originally Posted by Earthborn

Your analogy would be valid if you argued that all English texts consisted of 20 000 words, and that the few percent that differ between texts were enough to account for all possible variation in English.

I don't believe that the exact numbers have to match for the analogy to be valuable. Soapy was making a comment about combinatorics, I think.

Quote:

If you think that the genome is supposed to describe an organism in all its intricacies, then there obviously isn't enough information in the genome to do that.

Why do you say so? And if so, why are there enough letters in the English alphabet to compose all the books?

~~ Paul

[Hellbound]

Actually, just to point directly at the hear to fhte matter, we also have (IIRC) fewer genes than corn.

However, what is important is the number of protiens that can be coded. Evidence suggests that many areas of the DNA strand can code for multiple protiens, depending on the actions of various RNA bits. Several groupings on the genes can signal for things like "skip from here to there", "invert this section", and similar functions, in response to other changes in the cell. SciAm had an article on this about two years ago, IIRC...maybe 3. If anyone is interested I'll try to find the reference (I no longer have my digital subscription so it's harder to search).

[Ichneumonwasp]

Originally Posted by Earthborn

Your analogy would be valid if you argued that all English texts consisted of 20 000 words, and that the few percent that differ between texts were enough to account for all possible variation in English.

There cannot be an exact analogy because of the phenomena of alternative splicing and the interaction of timing in gene product expression. Bone morphogenic protein in one setting produces vastly different effects from what it does in a slightly different setting just a few days later in neural development.

Twenty to thirty thousand genes produce hundreds of thousands gene products.

[drkitten]

Originally Posted by Earthborn

Your analogy would be valid if you argued that all English texts consisted of 20 000 words, and that the few percent that differ between texts were enough to account for all possible variation in English.

That's closer to being true than most people realize. Almost all English texts do consist of the same 20,000 or fewer words. The difference between Bleak House and The Hound of the Baskervilles is not the vocabulary, but in the arrangement.

[Molinaro]

Originally Posted by wogoga

One can dispute whether 100 or 1,000 bytes are enough to determine folding and behaviour of proteins, but we can be sure that this information is not enough to describe in a halfway complete way a protein capable of carrying out several tasks.

Why would you expect a need to to encode instructions on how to fold the protein? The laws of physics determine how it will fold. All that is needed is for the sequence of base pairs to be put together. From that point, the fold is pre-determined, and requires no additional instructions.

Likewise, why would you expect proteins to require something like a program to tell it what to do once it is formed? Again, what it does once it is formed is purely determined by the laws of physics. The protein merely does what it can do without any recard to some pre-suposed intructions about what it should do.

[Dr Adequate]

Oh, another question. Which genetic information is not coded for by DNA? If it is known that DNA is insufficient, then surely is must be known that some particular enzyme is not coded for.

Oh, and how do such enzymes get there. How does something immaterial produce a perfectly material enzyme?

And if it is possible to do this without the whole complex process of transcription, why is there DNA at all? Why bother with all that complicated biochemistry when magical invisible things can do all the work?

[Ladewig]

Originally Posted by AK-Dave

Without reading anything in the other thread, I'm sure I can summarize:

Person with little to no understanding of developmental biology can't understand how our current understanding of biology can explain evolution or development.

Am I right?

You have hit on only one facet of the other thread. The rest is devoted to "scientific proof" of reincarnation.

[Soapy Sam]

Originally Posted by drkitten

That's closer to being true than most people realize. Almost all English texts do consist of the same 20,000 or fewer words. The difference between Bleak House and The Hound of the Baskervilles is not the vocabulary, but in the arrangement.

*Initiates search for "Baskerville" in "Bleak House". *

[Earthborn]

Originally Posted by Paul C. Anagnostopoulos

Why do you say so? And if so, why are there enough letters in the English alphabet to compose all the books?

That's because you can use as many letters as you want. Not all books need to have the same number of letters. The number of basepairs in DNA is pretty much the same for organisms of the same species.
It is also because you can use as many words as you want and put them in any arrangement you want. The number of genes in the genome is pretty much the same for organisms of the same species, most of the genes are the same and they are placed pretty much in the same order. And in humans there are only about 20 000 of them, humans have more than 20 000 properties so the genes cannot be an intricate description of a human.

In other words: suppose a Star Trek like transporter scans an entire human being and places all necessary information to rebuild a human in its buffer. You would need a whole lot more memory space than the 750MB needed to store the human being's DNA sequence, even when compressed. If you believe (a view wogaga attributes to "neo-Darwinists") in the misleading analogy that DNA is a sort of computer program to build a human, you might get the impression that

TransporterBuffer - 750MB = MissingInformation

Of course, the information is not really missing. It is just that nobody in his right mind argued that it was to be found in DNA.

Originally Posted by drkitten

The difference between Bleak House and The Hound of the Baskervilles is not the vocabulary, but in the arrangement.

In the genome, even the arrangement is mostly the same from person to person.

[plumjam]

Originally Posted by Soapy Sam

English alphabet, 26 letters.
English dictionary, 100,000 words.
English literature, more than a few books.

How is this possible?

by adding intelligent design

[Dr Adequate]

Please refrain from unjustified attacks on other posters.

Posted By:Paul C. Anagnostopoulos

[HawkeyeMD]

Point of information: what is a 'psychon' supposed to be? The particle of a woo brain that is irresistably attracted to a bad idea?

This may be explained in the other thread, but...

[cyborg]

Quote:

Even without compression it turns out to be less than 15 megabyte (i.e. less than one percent of Windows XP).

And here was me thinking that what a program does was more important than the number of bytes it has.

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Originally Posted by Earthborn

That's because you can use as many letters as you want. Not all books need to have the same number of letters. The number of basepairs in DNA is pretty much the same for organisms of the same species.

So this suggests that if we found 100 books with approximately the same number of letters, or even words, they would have to be quite similar. But, of course, they do not.

Quote:

It is also because you can use as many words as you want and put them in any arrangement you want. The number of genes in the genome is pretty much the same for organisms of the same species, most of the genes are the same and they are placed pretty much in the same order. And in humans there are only about 20 000 of them, humans have more than 20 000 properties so the genes cannot be an intricate description of a human.

First of all, most of the genes are not the same. There are many alleles. Second, the order does not matter. Chromosomes are not sequential computer programs, they are a pile of fairly independent templates for making proteins.

Quote:

In other words: suppose a Star Trek like transporter scans an entire human being and places all necessary information to rebuild a human in its buffer. You would need a whole lot more memory space than the 750MB needed to store the human being's DNA sequence, even when compressed. If you believe (a view wogaga attributes to "neo-Darwinists") in the misleading analogy that DNA is a sort of computer program to build a human, you might get the impression that

TransporterBuffer - 750MB = MissingInformation

Of course, the information is not really missing. It is just that nobody in his right mind argued that it was to be found in DNA.

I'd stay far away from this analogy, since the information needed to rebuild an existing human would have to map every particle in the person's body. Heisenberg might even rule this out.

Quote:

In the genome, even the arrangement is mostly the same from person to person.

But the trick is that the arrangement does not matter with anywhere near the strictness of the arrangement of words in a book.

~~ Paul

[Dr Adequate]

Originally Posted by Dr Adequate

Please refrain from unjustified attacks on other posters.

Posted By:Paul C. Anagnostopoulos

Again, I should love to know what it was that I actually said.

Thank you.

Edited by Miss A:

Previously removed comment deleted

[balrog666]

[quote=Dr Adequate;2913277]Again, I should love to know what it was that I actually said.

Thank you.

Edited by Miss A:

The removed comment that had been previously removed has now been removed

Unjustified?

BWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHA!

[Cuddles]

Originally Posted by cyborg

And here was me thinking that what a program does was more important than the number of bytes it has.

It's not what you do with it, it's how big it is that counts. Something like that anyway.

[Skeptic Ginger]

It's an Evangelical fantasy, find the flaw that disproves ALL SCIENCE!!!!!

[wogoga]

Yiab wrote:

>> What about the fact that gene expression will have extremely different large-scale results depending on the environment the genes are situated in? <<

If a computer program can perform "extremely different" tasks depending on input parameters, then from a purely logical point of view we must conclude: either the program contains the information corresponding to all tasks which can be switched on by parameters, or the parameters themselves constitue the information needed for the tasks. In the latter case we simply have additional information which is added to the programm in order to perform the corresponding task.

>> The fact that a fertilized human egg grows into a human shape within the womb of a human mother (or an environment almost identical to it) is a necessary part of the process, as is the nutrition transferred to the growing fetus through the umbilical cord. <<

Do you suggest that the growing egg somehow creates from the womb-environment additional information concerning the construction plan of the human being? Even if this were possible, there remains the problem addressed once by Richard Harter as an objection to a similar argument of PZ Myers:

"The problem is that development is not heritable. Consider a parent organism creating an egg. The parent not only passes on a genotype, it also passes on an environment in which the child organism will develop. Fine, this apparently is information that is not in the child's genotype. Consider, however, what happens when the child in turn creates an egg. It must supply the same developmental environment to its offspring. Now where does that information come from?" See: groups.google.com/group/sci.skeptic/msg/9b3b2aeb97dfba48

BTW, do you know that from a logical viewpoint reductionism implies, that a just hatched chick is less ordered (complex) than the just fertilized egg, because only processes which increase entropy are possible? (The open/closed-system confusion is pointless in this context.)

Panpsychism takes the fact seriously that enzymes do not conform to the laws of thermodynamics and Brownian motion, and therefore are able to increase order by working as purposefully as termites when constructing termite hills.

The main insight of panpsychists such as Nicholas of Cusa (1401-1464) was the recognition, that plants and animals do not grow from dead matter, but are built up by invisible animated entities with the involvement of perception and intelligence. See: groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/msg/9254fb9039c90b9c


A 'Critical Thinker' wrote:

>> Without reading anything ... I'm sure I can ... <<

Isn't it a strange result of evolution that dogmatic souls believing in the orthodox mainstream worldview tend to consider themselves to be critical and sceptic?

>> Too bad PZ Myers doesn't have time to participate in this forum. <<

Once I felt entitled to defended myself against attacks from PZ Myers: groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/msg/fb6f1be140221b7d


Cheers, Wolfgang

Isn't it an irony of evolution, that many of the most advanced souls of terrestrian evolution deny their own existence?

[voidx]

Whose this "God" fellah I keep hearing about?

Surely someone must have a consistent description for me.

Hello.....Hello?

**...where'd all the crickets come from...**

[Hellbound]

Quote:

BTW, do you know that from a logical viewpoint reductionism implies, that a just hatched chick is less ordered (complex) than the just fertilized egg, because only processes which increase entropy are possible? (The open/closed-system confusion is pointless in this context.)

Um, no.

Yes, all processes will increase entropy, generally.

However, a process can decrease entropy in a local area, as long as that corresponds with a greater increase outside that locality.

By your argument, we could never have snow, the temperature could never go down, and ice cubes are a violation of thermodynamics.

Your initial point is correct, your conclusion if not. The "complexity" of life is not doomed to get less by thermodynamics...life produces an abundant amount of entropy to counteract the localized ordering it creates.

And, finally, your assertion that open/closed has nothing to do with this simply illustrates your lack of understanding. Open/closed has everything to do with this. Because you are drawing a circle around the organism and considering only that part of the system; at which point it must be understood that this is an open system, and energy comes in and entropy outside the organism increases. The fact that an organism is not closed ties into the fact that it does not decrease entropy. You must consdier the entire system if you want to leave open and closed out of it.

Quote:

Panpsychism takes the fact seriously that enzymes do not conform to the laws of thermodynamics and Brownian motion, and therefore are able to increase order by working as purposefully as termites when constructing termite hills.

See above. You are incorrect. Nothing about enzymes refutes thermodynamics or Brownian motion. IF you have evidence otherwise, please refer to it specifically, rather than a generalized statement.

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Originally Posted by Wogoga

If a computer program can perform "extremely different" tasks depending on input parameters, then from a purely logical point of view we must conclude: either the program contains the information corresponding to all tasks which can be switched on by parameters, or the parameters themselves constitue the information needed for the tasks. In the latter case we simply have additional information which is added to the programm in order to perform the corresponding task.

And that is why we can describe evolution as a process of transmuting information from the environment to the genome.

Quote:

... because only processes which increase entropy are possible?

Oh, please.

~~ Paul

[Hellbound]

Paul:

Well, he's right, techically, that (so far as we know, on the macro level) only entropy-neutral or entropy-increasing processes are possible.

But that's general, not in regards to every part of an interacting system.

The decrease in entropy locally for a life-form is more than balanced by the increase in entropy that life form creates in the environment around it.

[Belz...]

Originally Posted by wogoga

So if we cannot even be sure that there is enough genetic information in order to determine all the proteins working in our body, then it becomes (sorry for the expression) completely absurd to assume that there is enough genetic information for the human body with all its anatomical features, let alone for human intelligence and consciousness.

Therefore, neo-Darwinism is refuted inasfar as it excludes non-material information. There remain however at least these three logically viable hypotheses:

1) The missing information comes from God
2) The missing information comes from morphic fields (Rupert Sheldrake)
3) The missing information comes from psychons (the 'units' of evolution)

The psychon hypothesis leads to the most and the most precise predictions (e.g. demographic saturation).

Cheers, Wolfgang

Go back to school.