As the Genetic Entropy discussion has been the topic of several threads and also spilled over to unrelated threads, it may be useful to pull together some of the failings of GE.
GE misrepresentation: Creation began with a state of perfect fitness.
Fact: The very word, fitness, is about the relationship between an organism and its local habitat. It is about being comparatively favored under environmental stressors. It is NOT about being closer to created perfection or about approximating some platonic ideal.
GE misrepresentation: Fitness should be defined in terms of real traits and abilities like intelligence or strength or longevity. Price and Carter - Fitness and ‘Reductive Evolution’
Fact: Fitness cannot be an inherent trait because environments are dynamic. This is important, so I will restate it. Fitness cannot be an inherent trait because environments are almost never ever ever static. The very characteristic which is an advantage in one setting is often a disadvantage at another time or place. An example is that animals on islands tend to be smaller than continental relatives. Another would be those spotted moths.
GE misrepresentation: Mutation accumulation results in extinction.
Fact: Genome stability results in extinction. When an environment changes faster than the population can adapt, the species goes extinct. There is no evidence of accumulated mutation collapsing a species, including H1N1.
GE misrepresentation: The purpose of the paper was to see if we could find genetic entropy in action, and we did. Attempts to obscure genetic entropy in the H1N1 Virus
Fact: This should be headlined as “attempt to obscure our real agenda”. If that was the purpose of the paper, it is interesting that the phrase “genetic entropy” is not even found in the paper!
GE misrepresentation: There is a correlation between disease attenuation and accumulated mutations in H1N1
…there is obviously also a correlation between mutation count and reduced death rates. A New Look at an Old Virus
Fact: Even in 1918, the H1N1 grew more virulent. Not only is Sanford proposing a correlation absent causation or physiological mechanism, but the correlation itself is a non-starter.
GE misrepresentation: Genetic entropy is not really directly about reproduction—it is about the decline of information in the genome.
Fact: It is about the decline of information in the minds of young earth creationists. GE does not allow for a world where one population lived with the exact same smallpox pathogen while another was decimated. GE cannot account for a virus crossing over species barriers to begin with. Measles does not line up with the GE narrative. There is no evidence of any decline in human or animal genetics over the past thousands of years.
GE practical application: From Sanford Carter Thus, the possibility of an artificial acceleration of mutation rate deserves further investigation, and may suggest new avenues of research in terms of pandemic management
Question: What could possibly go wrong???