There is a video on YouTube where Dawkins is asked the following question, and is presumed to be stumped:
This is a flawed question. The fallacy that the interviewer falls prey to is assuming that a single change in a base pair such as a genetic deletion has some measurable causal effect on the overall “information content” of the genome. First of all, he doesn’t even define what he means by information content.
IANAGeneticist, but if I were to define the information content of the genome, I would go to information theory. The information content of the genome is best measured by the amount of surprise that the organism encounters in his environment. If he is less surprised, there is more information. If he is more surprised, there is less. There is clearly no objective measure of this. The best we have is the litmus test of natural selection, but even then, the survival of the organism could be due to a completely unrelated factor in the environment.
This video is Christian propaganda, and I doubt the interviewer could have answered it, despite cleverly ordering the shots to make Dawkins look stupid.
Wow, the comments in that link are scary. I read the first 3 pages, and not one person challenged the creationist viewpoint.
First of all, it’s not clear to me that the video hasn’t been edited. Dawkins asks the interviewer to stop recording, and when the camera comes back on, he appears to be answering a completely different question. In fact, how do we know that isn’t just edited clips of Dawkins with the interview dubbed on top?
It’s pretty clear to me that if you get a mutation that adds a gene that codes for new protein, then you’ve added “information”. But not every mutation is necessarily going to add “information”. You may get a mutation that just says “make more of protein XYZ”, or “make four legs instead of two”. I wouldn’t consider either of those to have added “information”.
Just when you though creationists had finally given up, you get stuff like this bubbling back up to the surface and treated seriously. Almost makes you want to cry.
It’s wrong and ridiculous in a “million” different ways, and yet they not only never told the kid, taught him to do better science, but they gave him first prize, thus setting him up to be either a laughingstock or deluded for life.
…and a complete lack of understanding ofwhat science is and how it works. If anyone actually “disproved evolution”, that person would be given a Nobel Prize. I’m sure creationists think that person would be “excommunicated from science”, or something.
That’s an attitude I see a lot from the devoutly religious that don’t have much experience with scientific thinking, though. It’s the only frame of reference they have, so they apply it to evolution, or with more frequency lately, global warming debates. They see scientists and see priests, or preachers, not understanding that the fact of the matter doesn’t weigh on any one individual. It’s a fundamental (ha!) misunderstanding of the scientific method, as you say, but it certainly sheds some light to me on how they’re approaching the issue.
First - I didn’t think that any evolutionary scientists have ever had any reason to look at stalactites, no. Geologists would, who young-earth-creationists have also butted heads with, and paleontologists, who kind of straddle the ground between geology and biology in some ways IIRC.
Also - if there was a theory that said it took millions of years to form stalactites, they probably mentioned in the small print that their results were presuming the ABSENCE of paper towels at the start of the process.
So, what’s the best way to counter this kind of misinformation? Can you create a website that would be high on the list of creationists, which when they link to, they can read both sides of the issue? What do you do?
If you look to the right of the feature video, you’ll see other videos on the same subject, not necessarily by the same person. This is where I found Dawkin’s response.
The amazing thing is how many Catholics and and mainstream Protestants (about 30% of both) are creationists. If priests would just give one sermon a year on how Genesis is not meant to be interpreted literally, that would go a long way.
