absolutetruth wrote:tedlusk wrote:absolutetruth wrote:tedlusk wrote:What was wrong with my response? That it pointed out the shaky ground that creationist information hawks stand on?
How do
you define genetic information?
I don't. I am not the one making an argument out of it.
then what would be considered genetic information? if there were such a thing as genetic information, surely you can describe it, for in order to say that something is
not genetic information, you should know what
would qualify as genetic information. do you?
Do YOU?
Again, YOU have brought up the issue, and YOU were asked to define it. What does the creationist do? Why, he asks the evolutionist to define it! Clear meaning - the creationist doesn't know, but has heard other creationists claim it is a great argument.
Problem is, they don't know, either.
Does the creationist mean something like Shannon information? Or something else? Are they referring to CSI (another worthless construct), or not? Is it some function of probability? It seems to depend on what argument they are trying to make, which is why I try to get the creationist to provide their definitions before I will discuss it. And as we have seen, the creationist prefers to play games.
Here is what a bombastic obnoxious creationist who fancies himself an expert on information theory (in fact, he claims ot have been working on a paper with Gitt on this, but that was about 2 years ago and he hasn't mentioned it since - he was probably lying) says:
What I do know of information tells me that the traditional approaches (employing Shannon and similar) to this issue in biology is totally wrong. Thus, those that say "information may/does increase via evolution" are ignorant of the fact that they're employing an incomplete definition. That much I know.
What's a baseball player? Put a catchers' mitt on the hand of a person - did that make the person a baseball player? Nope, there's much more to being a baseball player than merely wearing the equipment.
The difficulty is in formulating/formalizing a comprehensive definition of information - not in being able to recognize its presence or absence. Analogy : If I handed you an electronic instrument that you had no idea of its function, you would still be able to say that it is an "apparatus of some kind, possibly for some purpose".
You would be able to detect presence (of technology) without being able to define (what the technology is).
So, that clown says that you cannot define information in a meaningful way, yet you can say that it cannot increase naturally.
Brilliant!