# Richard Dawkins "stumped" by question on evolution. **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [August 15, 2008, 10:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/richard-dawkins-stumped-by-question-on-evolution/460152 "2008-08-15T22:55:43Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2008, 8:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/richard-dawkins-stumped-by-question-on-evolution/460152/41 "2008-08-16T20:53:08Z")
[QUOTE=John Mace] Distinctive markers? They would pass on whatever extra chromosomal material they have in the ovum or sperm. I guess you could call that a “marker”. [/QUOTE] Even if they mate with someone who doesn’t have Downs? And if it’s with someone that does have Downs, does the mutation get reinforced? Two generations later, does a person with one Downs grandparent have any detectable genetic anomaly? ---
**Author:** ![Squink](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5e925/32.png) [@Squink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Squink)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2008, 9:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/richard-dawkins-stumped-by-question-on-evolution/460152/42 "2008-08-16T21:15:16Z")
[QUOTE=El Zagna] So what’s up with this question? [/QUOTE] Creationists are fond of equilibrium thermodynamic systems where disorder always increases. Fortunately for the rest of us, life on earth exists in an environment which is far from equilibrium. Under these conditions, information content can spontaneously increase, with the formation of dissipative structures. Ilya Prigogine’s [1977 Nobel lecture](http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/1977/prigogine-lecture.pdf) (pdf) covers the topic in greater detail than I remember offhand. Without knowledge of this type of behavior, creationist are left floundering at the apparent disconnect between thermodynamics and evolution. ---
**Author:** ![monavis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e0b2c6/32.png) [@monavis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monavis)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2008, 10:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/richard-dawkins-stumped-by-question-on-evolution/460152/43 "2008-08-19T10:40:20Z")
If Dawkins were stumped it wouldn’t make him wrong about evolution. Are creationists wrong because they can’t (or refuse) to answer who created the place for God to be? A Being needs a place to exist if it isn’t in exsistence then it is nowhere. Monavis ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2008, 1:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/richard-dawkins-stumped-by-question-on-evolution/460152/44 "2008-08-19T13:52:14Z")
I’m sorry…explain to me again why people choose to argue with creationists? Creationism is an illogical theory that requires no proof and has no scientific basis. Evolution, OTOH, IS a scientific theory so any gaps or inconsistancies due to our incomplete understanding of the it basically gives Creationists all the evidence they need to believe they are right. ---
**Author:** ![CurtC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ce73a5/32.png) [@CurtC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CurtC)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2008, 4:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/richard-dawkins-stumped-by-question-on-evolution/460152/45 "2008-08-19T16:54:07Z")
[QUOTE=Stranger On A Train] As for the question posed to Dawkins cited in the o.p., I’m unclear as to why Dawkins would be stumped by it. [/QUOTE] He wasn’t stumped by the question - he was stumped wondering what to do with the creationists who had just tricked him into an interview. ---
**Author:** ![nameless](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/779978/32.png) [@nameless](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nameless)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2008, 6:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/richard-dawkins-stumped-by-question-on-evolution/460152/46 "2008-08-19T18:39:09Z")
Gene duplication is the obvious mode by which “information” (god I hate that word) is added to the genome. Happens all the time. A complete gene duplication happened at the base of the vertebrate lineage, it happened again at the base of the teleost (bony fish) lineage. Gene duplication relieves selective pressure on essential genes, allowing them to diverge from their original function. It’s really as simple as that. Is that in and of itself a mutation? It doesn’t fucking matter. I saw Philip Johnson give a talk once. I gave him Hox gene duplication as an example of information gain. His reply was: well you’ve just duplicated something that’s already there, no function has been added. Then onto the next question. He was unwilling to see the next obvious step–if I make a photocopy of a document, then change words in the document so that it is a completely different document, hasn’t information been added by this process? This line of argument is completely disingenuous. ---
**Author:** ![CurtC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ce73a5/32.png) [@CurtC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CurtC)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2008, 6:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/richard-dawkins-stumped-by-question-on-evolution/460152/47 "2008-08-19T18:53:34Z")
[QUOTE=nameless] I saw Philip Johnson give a talk once. I gave him Hox gene duplication as an example of information gain. His reply was: well you’ve just duplicated something that’s already there, no function has been added. Then onto the next question. He was unwilling to see the next obvious step–if I make a photocopy of a document, then change words in the document so that it is a completely different document, hasn’t information been added by this process? [/QUOTE] The way I see it, he would be right in asserting that _not much_ new information had been added by simply duplicating a gene. Now if you want to explain how you can get from that minimal amount of new information, to something significant, you need to go back to the mathematical definition of information. Simply duplicating that one gene allows mutations in one copy without affecting the survivability of the creature. Now you can play around with the copy, making random changes to it. If you take something ordered and make random changes, the newly-changed gene will very likely contain _more_ information than the original, according to the mathematical definition of information. Every once in a while, one of these random changes will actually be useful and will be more likely to get propagated. When it does, you have a creature with added information. IOW, in my view, it’s not the gene duplication that adds information, the duplication just sets up a situation where information can get added by random mutations. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2008, 7:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/richard-dawkins-stumped-by-question-on-evolution/460152/48 "2008-08-19T19:54:03Z")
[QUOTE=Der Trihs] Or, they insist that Earth IS a closed system. I’ve seen them insist that the energy from the sun doesn’t count. [/QUOTE] The funniest example I ever saw of this was titled “Creationist almost discovers the sun” on some of the sites that linked to it. the original forum post happened here: [http://smashboards.com/showthread.php?p=1073734#post1073734](http://smashboards.com/showthread.php?p=1073734#post1073734) ---
**Author:** ![nameless](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/779978/32.png) [@nameless](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nameless)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2008, 8:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/richard-dawkins-stumped-by-question-on-evolution/460152/49 "2008-08-19T20:32:13Z")
[QUOTE=CurtC] The way I see it, he would be right in asserting that _not much_ new information had been added by simply duplicating a gene. IOW, in my view, it’s not the gene duplication that adds information, the duplication just sets up a situation where information can get added by random mutations. [/QUOTE] Yeah, but that’s my point. It’s a trivial objection. The entire mechanism for information gain is in place and describable. If you focus on “mutation” alone (and lets just narrow it down to single nucleotide polymorphisms since everyone likes to ignore the additions, deletions, microsatellite slippage, inversions, and translocations that invariably occur), like some kind of moron, then sure, I guess information isn’t added. It just makes me angry. ---
**Author:** ![Mtgman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b5a626/32.png) [@Mtgman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mtgman)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2008, 11:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/richard-dawkins-stumped-by-question-on-evolution/460152/50 "2008-08-19T23:51:19Z")
[QUOTE=msmith537] I’m sorry…explain to me again why people choose to argue with creationists? Creationism is an illogical theory that requires no proof and has no scientific basis. Evolution, OTOH, IS a scientific theory so any gaps or inconsistancies due to our incomplete understanding of the it basically gives Creationists all the evidence they need to believe they are right. [/QUOTE] Because you were tricked into it, as Dawkins says he was in [the intro to the article he wrote in response to this video being published](http://www.skeptics.com.au/articles/dawkins.htm). > [@](#): > > In September 1997, I allowed an Australian film crew into my house in Oxford without realising that their purpose was creationist propaganda. In the course of a suspiciously amateurish interview, they issued a truculent challenge to me to “give an example of a genetic mutation or an evolutionary process which can be seen to increase the information in the genome.” It is the kind of question only a creationist would ask in that way, and it was at this point I tumbled to the fact that I had been duped into granting an interview to creationists - a thing I normally don’t do, for good reasons. In my anger I refused to discuss the question further, and told them to stop the camera. However, I eventually withdrew my peremptory termination of the interview as a whole. This was solely because they pleaded with me that they had come all the way from Australia specifically in order to interview me. Even if this was a considerable exaggeration, it seemed, on reflection, ungenerous to tear up the legal release form and throw them out. I therefore relented. > > My generosity was rewarded in a fashion that anyone familiar with fundamentalist tactics might have predicted. When I eventually saw the film a year later [sup]1.[/sup] I found that it had been edited to give the false impression that I was **incapable** of answering the question about information content [sup]2.[/sup] In fairness, this may not have been quite as intentionally deceitful as it sounds. You have to understand that these people really believe that their question cannot be answered! Pathetic as it sounds, their entire journey from Australia seems to have been a quest to film an evolutionist failing to answer it. > > With hindsight - given that I had been suckered into admitting them into my house in the first place - it might have been wiser simply to answer the question. But I like to be understood whenever I open my mouth - I have a horror of blinding people with science - and this was not a question that could be answered in a soundbite. First you first have to explain the technical meaning of “information”. Then the relevance to evolution, too, is complicated - not really difficult but it takes time. Rather than engage now in further recriminations and disputes about exactly what happened at the time of the interview (for, to be fair, I should say that the Australian producer’s memory of events seems to differ from mine), I shall try to redress the matter now in constructive fashion by answering the original question, the “Information Challenge”, at adequate length Again, a propensity for wordiness hurts him here, but I didn’t really find a good place to chop it for space. Enjoy, Steven ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2008, 11:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/richard-dawkins-stumped-by-question-on-evolution/460152/51 "2008-08-22T23:31:39Z")
[QUOTE=CurtC] He wasn’t stumped by the question - he was stumped wondering what to do with the creationists who had just tricked him into an interview. [/QUOTE] Well, any evolutionary zoologist worth this salt should know what to do about that; you release the hordes of genetically modified, laser-guided curare-venom-dispatching wasps at them any dance a jig while shouting, “How’s that for a plague, Fundie maggots! Let’s see your god do that!” Geez, I have to think of everything? Dawkins is a bright fellow; I’d expect him to one-up me on that. Stranger [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/richard-dawkins-stumped-by-question-on-evolution/460152.md?page=2)