In a message dated 2/2/01 7:49:10 PM, johnmarlow@gmx.net writes:
>Hogan's reply:
>
>Hmm. Difficult to know which to pick. Maybe the question of the
>origin of the stupendous amount of information in a genome --
>... But _not one_
>of the examples usually cited in textbooks etc. as "evolution in
>action" has ever been found to add information, and so cannot count
>as a meaningful evolutionary step. Bacterial resistance to
>antibiotics, for example, (e.g. streptomycin) results from a
>deterioration that loses the molecular specificity necessary to
>accept the antibiotic's deactivating "key" -- i.e. a loss of genetic
>information, not a gain.
I'm really surprised you'd fall for such a baldly ridiculous claim.
The evolutionary field is full of examples of "information" gain, either
by the Shannon-Weaver minimum compressibility definition or
by a predictive definition. Examples include beta-lactamases, the
nylonase (which arose by a frameshift!), the complex chromosomal
polymorphisms of French mosquito insecticide resistance,
polydactyly (six-fingered people), and Lenski's bacteria.
The guy you're citing is either completely clueless or a bald-faced liar.
"Evolution can't produce information" claims usually derive from the
latter. Creationists try to dodge the issue by defining "information"
in a Shannon-Weaver sense when discussing selection and then
redefining to a completely different predictive sense when discussing
mutation.
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