Olson:
To be addressed is your claim that evolution adds information. That needs to be supported.
PZ:
Of course evolution adds information: it's a process driven by random variation of a string of information, with subsequent filtering to find viable and more fit variants. My children are not identical to my wife and myself; they contain novel combinations of genes and many new mutations.
The position that children are not identical to the parents but are combinations of genes is irrelevant to the question, and the position that they have many new mutations is without data and is questionable.
Mixing information around in a population is not the same as creating new information that leads to new features such as spinal columns, temperature regulation, sexual repoduction, etc. That is exactly the problem with the “new species” of finch seen by the Grants on the Galapagos. (The Grants do not call the new group a "new species", but say that the group has been reproductively isolated and is in stage 2 of speciation. They also claim that it is possible that this small isolated group will fail to thrive. The latter is more common than the former).
The idea that mixing information around within a population leads to new features is both counter intuitive and counter to rational mathematical thought concerning information theory. But information theory is only invoked by evolutionists when it is convenient, and is rejected when it is not. The argument against entropic degradation of information (per standard information theory) would, in this case, be that the information did not exist at the initiation of the transmission, but was designated by the recipient, as filtered by the environment. It is this magically created information that is disputable; there is significant probability against its actual occurrence, a fact ignored by evolutionists (10-200 is still possible, right?).
PZ:
I'll add that development is also a process that adds information. The adult multicellular organism that is PZ Myers is a concentrated node of complex information of much greater volume than the fertilized single-celled zygote that my parents made in 1956. As individuals and as a species, we extract energy and information from our environment to increase our personal information content.
Evolution is being defined here as everything that can possibly happen to living things. Under this definition, even learning is called evolution. This is a Red Herring Fallacy, taking the argument off into the weeds. Here is the point that is being dodged: contained within the genetics and epi-genetics is enough information to deterministically form a unique being. That being changes throughout its life in a basically deterministic fashion, ultimately dying unavoidably. Apparently even the basic pre-Cambrian creatures also sported this deterministic feature. What is the source of that information?
The follow on question (not asked here) is “how did first life know how to reproduce accurately, as well as the other features of being alive, such as deriving nutriton, eliminating waste, creating a protective coating, being anti-entropic, and so on?” The answer to such questions are not empirical, they are stories created on the foundations of no evidence whatsoever. These stories are said to be valid on the basis that because evolution is true, then the stories are true. Circular. Religious.
Olson:
There is a logical dichotomy involved. Life either has a natural origin or not. If not, then the origin must come from outside natural mechanisms. You can claim that we just don't know, but while waiting, need to entertain the possibility that there is a cause outside of nature. To say there can be no such thing is not a scientific statement or even a logical one but an a priori elimination of one whole field of inquiry.
PZ:
And there he goes. Don't trust him; he wants an admission that a supernatural agent is merely possible, and then he's going to pretend that you've admitted that the entire intricate structure of Christianity is a scientific enterprise. I'm not going to fall for it, and no one else should be that gullible, either.
I do not say that there can be no such thing as a supernatural agent; I say that the creationists have not provided any credible evidence for such a thing, which is a very different argument altogether. As I said in the debate, if you want an idea to be scientific, show us the evidence. It's possible that the elves have been guiding evolution all these years, but it's not a possiblity I have to seriously consider in the absence of evidence for the existence of elves.
For starters, PZ entirely avoids the question of the source of first life. Instead of demanding scientific evidence for his own position, he demands scientific evidence for the supernatural agent. His argument devolves to the rudiments of Philosophical Materialism: show us the evidence he bleats, as if that is an answer to the issue of “a priori elimination of one whole field of inquiry”.
”credible evidence” is always the Atheist mantra. This allows them deniability, because when they can’t deny the evidence, they can deny the Materialist credibility of the evidence and then go immediately to false analogies (elves, etc). The underlying basis for this maneuver is the fallacious position that empirical evidence – which is voluntarily materialist – is identical to Philosophical Materialism – which is a metaphysical, religious position without possibility of proof. So they always demand ”scientific evidence”, which is logically and functionally impossible for metaphysical issues.
And they never answer the question, “if the philosophy of living things must be, by definition, materialist, then the origin of life must be materialist also, if logic is to be coherent: so where is the evidence for abiogenesis?” And they never answer the question, “where is the experimental, replicable evidence for ancient speciation and development of new, complex features?” The position is that science will magically someday answer this, despite its metaphysical nature.
As I have maintained consistently, both ID and Evolution are religious positions, each of which is based on unsupportable (experimentally) inferences taken from static pieces of evidence. So it is reasonable to assume that each position is taken from, not science, but prior commitment to an agenda regarding the issue of non-physical reality. Since that issue is regarding a metaphysical existence, the positions are actually positions on metaphysics, i.e. religious.
Olson:
Your closing remarks about evolutionary research into the beak changes of Darwin's Finches need to be answered with the point that they are still finches and the changes cycle with changing environmental conditions.
PZ:
No, because that point is stupid.
What do you expect, that finches in the Galapagos will evolve into monkeys? Over the timescale examined, they will change slowly, and any changes we see will be incorporated into our concept of the finch clade. This is what evolution predicts.
I'll add that we are seeing speciation in Darwin's finches. Some of the latest work shows the emergence of a new finch species in the populations studied by the Grants. This is what we expect: slow shifts over time, punctuated by the separation of populations into emergent species, and they'll all be members of the reptile clade, the bird clade, and the finch clade. They branch, they don't leap categories as creationists demand.
The nonsense about how the changes "cycle with changing environmental conditions" is creo-speak for "they didn't change directionally!" Again, that's not what evolution predicts. Populations will drift genetically, and will also to some degree track changes in the environment. That's what was predicted, and that's what was seen in the Galapagos.
Again, PZ dodges the real issue: there is NO evidence of new features being produced on the Galapagos by finches (see the attending post on the Grants and Galapagos finches). Reducing the concept of evolution to sloshing around in the existing genome, yet expecting entirely new creatures to appear which is the original idea behind evolution (and in deep time of course), is non-coherent. So it is important for them to dodge the issue of new features and new creatures, and to insist that evolution is gene sloshing, and gene sloshing is evolution proof. The size of the finch beaks do cycle; PZ ignores this totally, except to claim that "drift" without direction is evolution. This is a simplistic definition, designed to "drift" away from the necessity of new features, high complexity, and new creatures to have come from "drift". "Drift" specifically refers to microevolution and cannot rationally apply to macroevolution (which is why evolutionistas refuse to use that term). This is an exercise in deception.
Mixing up the definitions of evolution is a rational fallacy that is important to philosophical evolution / materialist fundamentalists. They can prove the simplistic, materialist definition and then claim proof by default for the metaphysical definition. It’s cake and eat it too. It is false.
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