Neo-Darwinists, give me all ya got! Explain?

Question

Source Site- http://www.panspermia.org/chandra.htm

Mathematician/Biologist Chandra Wickramasinghe (who doesn't believe in Creation-Science by the way):

"It is stated according to the theory," (neo-Darwinism) "that the accumulation of copying errors, sorted out by the process of natural selection, the survival of the fittest, could account both for the rich diversity of life and for the steady upward progression from bacterium to Man. In our recent book Sir Fred Hoyle and I have argued strongly against this proposition. We agree that successive copying would accumulate errors, but such errors on the average would lead to a steady degradation of information. It is ridiculous to suppose that the information provided by one single primitive bacterium can be upgraded by copying to produce a man, and all other living things that inhabit our planet. This conventional wisdom, as it is called, is similar to the proposition that the first page of Genesis copied billion upon billions of time would eventually accumulate enough copying errors and hence enough variety to produce not merely the entire Bible but all the holding of all the major libraries of the world. The two statements are equally ridiculous. The processes of mutation and natural selection can only produce very minor effects in life as a kind of fine tuning of the whole evolutionary process. There is above all an absolute need for a continual addition of information for life, an addition that extends in time throughout the entire period for the geological record."

Answer 1

Oh dear, I can recommend a good movie. But i can't explain that to you. But "Earth: The Biography" just was released onto DVD. It was produced by the Discovery Network if I remember correctly.  

Answer 2

Unfortunately, his claim has been mathematically disproven in numerous experiments, and he overlooks key factors in how new information arises in the genome.

No cookie for him.

Cookie for you though; at least you tried to cite a reasonable-sounding source.

Answer 3

So does saying "NO THAT'S WRONG" make it wrong? This isn't even a question and does not even pose a single problem with evolution.

I can say: "It is ridiculous to..." assume that evolution cannot happen without ever mentioning a problem with it other that it is "ridiculous".

Answer 4

Of course, your friend the mathematician is ignoring the fact that "information" comes from innumerable different sources and not merely copying errors.

Answer 5

thank you evolution macro is impossible. look at www.icr.org

Answer 6

Mathematicians are good at mathematics- biology is for biologists. Check out his c v -he holds no qualification in biology so why do you call him a mathematician/biologist?

Answer 7

That also ignores the other ways in which evolution takes place. There are others, for example;

Many single celled organisms can actually absorb and put to work the DNA of things they eat, and pass that modification down to their descendants.

Retro Viruses insert bits or their genetic material into the organism they infects DNA and some kinds are passed down. There are about 30,000 bits of virus in the human genome.

Epi-genetics has a huge affect. This is a matter of what genes are active and which aren't. In this sense your genes actually respond to your environment and the ones you pass down aren't quite the same as what you started with.

You're talking about all life on earth. That's billions and billions of experiments per minute for billions of years.

Answer 8

I take it you've never heard of the "junk DNA" that's present in the genome of every single living organism on Earth...right?

Or how certain organisms DO have errors in them, compared to other organisms; but that they manage to find work-arounds using their environment (e.g.; guinea pigs are fairly unique among the rodents for being unable to synthesize Vitamin C naturally, but they make up for it by eating lots of fresh fruit)?

Answer 9

Well, that has as much evidence for it as creationism.

Answer 10

"This conventional wisdom, as it is called, is similar to the proposition that the first page of Genesis copied billion upon billions of time would eventually accumulate enough copying errors and hence enough variety to produce not merely the entire Bible but all the holding of all the major libraries of the world"

over 4 billion years, assuming every translation that survived was superior to the last in this facet, I'd say it's not implausible.

Answer 11

Chandra Wickramasinghe is a mathematician? That may explain their criticisms - "ridiculous" is not a relevant term in scientific analysis.

Consider "the paradox of Achilles and the Tortoise" as presented by Zeno.

"Achilles is in a footrace with the tortoise. Achilles allows the tortoise a head start of 100 feet. If we suppose that each racer starts running at some constant speed (one very fast and one very slow), then after some finite time, Achilles will have run 100 feet, bringing him to the tortoise's starting point. During this time, the tortoise has run a much shorter distance, for example 10 feet. It will then take Achilles some further time to run that distance, in which time the tortoise will have advanced farther; and then more time still to reach this third point, while the tortoise moves ahead. Thus, whenever Achilles reaches somewhere the tortoise has been, he still has farther to go. Therefore, because there are an infinite number of points Achilles must reach where the tortoise has already been, he can NEVER overtake the tortoise..."

Now while that is mathematically 100% correct - in any observable test we find that every single human who is healthy, and able to race the tortoise... WINS the race! (unless they choose not to run and forfeit instead). The facts of reality simply do not match the mathematics because the mathematician is limited by false assumptions about the nature of reality.

The problem that Chandra Wickramasinghe is unable to resolve about genetic information, suffers from the same flawed assumptions that we see in the example of Zeno's paradox of Achilles and the Tortoise.

Answer 12

Girl, you are seriously insane

Answer 13

creation-science is BS, by the way.

Answer 14

Dogs don't contain much information.

Answer 15

Clearly this individual is ignorant of basic evolutionary biology.

The following is a complete strawman argument: 'This conventional wisdom, as it is called, is similar to the proposition that the first page of Genesis copied billion upon billions of time would eventually accumulate enough copying errors and hence enough variety to produce not merely the entire Bible but all the holding of all the major libraries of the world'

That's not how evolution works. It's a terrible metaphor, and shows a lack of understanding of basic genetics and what biological information entails.

Answer 16

Evolution is impossible.  Every mutation that has ever been observed has either damaged genetic information or destroyed it completely. However, evolution requires a mutation that doesn't decrease genetic information, but instead increases it.

Answer 17

He proposes Panspermia.