The issue is evolutionary speculations where there is no evidence of pre existence of information.
Since evolutionary processes have been empirically observed to create new information, what’s the problem?
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Are you an OEC or YEC?
I am not sure what I am. I do not advocate for a young earth.
Then you shouldn’t have any issues with evolution starting with the first life form, right? The first life form would have had pre-existing information, and everything evolved from that starting point.
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Right, the “random” processes are paired with a selection function to produce the information.
Now where was I going with this? What other theory in biology pairs a stochastic process with a selection function? I guess I ate too much turkey over Thanksgiving, it’s not coming to mind. 
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So Behe’s objection to Theistic Evolution is that it says ID is wrong, and Behe says ID is not wrong.
Well, can’t argue with that. Since there is no argument there in the first place.
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I don’t now. All I know is that we don’t have an answer for the origin all the novel infusions of information Gpuccio talks about in his articles. If the first cell had all this information then you may have a feasible hypothesis. The issue is the the common ancestor (if there was one) was complex. There is really no way around this.
How do you “know” that Bill? Science has understood how natural evolutionary processes create new information and add it to a genome for almost 70 years, ever since we began studying genetics. You’ve had it explained to you dozens of times but you always come back with the same false “we don’t know” claim. There really is no way around your “forgetfulness”.
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Years ago I used to wonder how random processes could possibly create new information. A watershed breakthrough for my thinking (1975?) came when I wrote a memory efficient virtual-checkerboard implementation of Conway’s Game of Life in PL/1. (Anybody else remember that programming language on the old IBM 360?)
I remember testing my software with various starting configurations. The most spectacular was a small group of cells on the checkerboard in the shape of the Greek letter Pi:
@ @ @
@… @
@… @
It took something like 75 generations of “growth” for the resulting colony to stabilize. If one fanned the continuous-feed, green-bar printout like a Disney animation, it looked like a combination fireworks display and chain-reaction explosion—including independently travelling and yet symmetrical “spinning stars”. I remember thinking, “How could purely random processes produce these amazing shapes and animations which I never actually described in my programming?”
Things got even more interesting when I started using a random number generator to select the initial cell configurations. I didn’t have names for the amazing “structures” being produced by the program but nearly a half century later the aforementioned Wikipedia article on Conway’s Game of Life labels them toads, beacons, pulsars, and pentadecathlons.
One night when that IBM 360 was atypically relatively idle, I tested a “souped up” [sic] version of my program. It experimented with a large variety of random initial cell configurations in order to seek out the most interesting and long-lasting colony. (For example, it would try to maximize the number of generations till colony “stability” while still staying within the maximum memory constraints of my computer account.) While perusing the many pages of printouts, I realized that I was witnessing a kind of evolution of life. This was many years before the Avida EA program (early 1990’s, I think) would take this concept to a whole 'nother level. I wasn’t the only one absolutely enthralled by Conway’s fascinating description of his Game of Life which he published in a 1970 issue of Scientific American. I suppose Avida was an inevitable result of that kind of inspiration.
Years after my crude experiments with Conway’s Game of Life, I could much more easily grasp the power of EAs (evolutionary algorithms, aka genetic algorithms) because of that experience. Random processes can and do produce new information. It would be shocking if random processes did not produce new information and structures.
I know that many of us in the past have posted this EA illustration example on Peaceful Science—but it’s time for another rerun. This is just too much fun. And it is a reminder that random processes can “design” all sorts of efficient solutions for all sorts of problems, even though such EA software is far from being an intelligent agent.
https://rednuht.org/genetic_cars_2/
(That concludes another of my old-timey stories for @Dan_Eastwood.)
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I’m leaving the Genetic_cars_2 Evolutionary Algorithm program running all night on my computer to see what new designs (and new information) it can manage to generate in eight hours or so.
Random processes can build amazing designs, just as God intended.
We may throw the dice, but the LORD determines how they fall.
— Proverbs 16:33 (NLT)
@Colewd, I hope you will investigate not only the Genetic Cars EA but Avida and even the original Conway’s Game of Life. EAs played a huge role in my coming to a much better understanding of how the earth’s biosphere operates.
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Hi Allen
This is an interesting case you bring up. The issue for evolution is different as we are dealing with linear functional sequences. Inside cells this is layered from DNA sequences where Exons (translatable bits DNA inside genes) are spliced out directly coded or alternative spliced and then translated to Amino Acid sequences.
The program that simulates linear functional sequences is Dawkins Weasel program. The issue is he needs the pre existence of linear functional information (aka genetic information) as a target to get the program to finish.
Eric MH is working on a proof here and discussing this with Tom English at TSZ.
http://theskepticalzone.com/wp/evo-info-4-addendum/
The answer is random mutations and natural selection, as you have been told thousands of times.
Bare assertion with no evidence.
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You seem to forget about prokaryotes which only rarely have introns. You also don’t explain how introns, exons, and linear functional sequence change anything with respect to evolutionary algorithms.
Since life existed with DNA, that isn’t a problem. Again, all we would need is the initial organism and then evolution proceeds from there.
I will use your way to answer this.
Evidence here, which you continue to ignore:
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Is this really evidence or rationalization that a mechanism that is almost certainly incapable of the task at hand is a viable scientific explanation. We know a mind can produce information. We also have mathematical arguments that algorithms cannot.
http://theskepticalzone.com/wp/evo-info-4-addendum/
It’s evidence your claim is wrong. Just as Avida is evidence your claim is wrong. Just as the Evolving Cars program is evidence your claim is wrong. Just as the Evolving Soft Robots program is evidence your claim is wrong.
You’ve seen all of these examples multiple times but continue to go LA LA LA! I DON’T SEE NO EVIDENCE!. Maybe with your demonstrated memory span you mean you haven’t seen any evidence in the last 15 minutes.
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Yes, it is evidence. Please go to that thread and address it.
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Ah, EricMH’s silly argument which has zero relevance to actual biology and which Tom English has beaten into the proverbial fine pink mist. That’s where you once again showed your level of scientific understanding by demanding we test animals with DNA against animals with no DNA. 
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