Increasing complexity...

[YesIAMJames]

A while ago I made a video called "6 questions for creationist" and I'm planning on making a response video to the answers I've received. One of my questions was what potential future evidence would change your mind about evolution? Of course I got answers like "nothing, I know creation is true!".

However one person actually gave me a valid answer "I would believe in evolution if evidence could be presented that evolution could be proven to increase complexity". What evidence I present to him that he can't argue with? The best I can come up with is the example of nylonase (since there are aspects of the fossil record he doesn't accept).

Can anyone think of any better examples which take no more than a minute to explain?

My original video:



This is the guy I'm going to respond to. His answer is at 4:47

 

[quantumfireball2099]

A while ago I made a video called "6 questions for creationist" and I'm planning on making a response video to the answers I've received. One of my questions was what potential future evidence would change your mind about evolution? Of course I got answers like "nothing, I know creation is true!".

However one person actually gave me a valid answer "I would believe in evolution if evidence could be presented that evolution could be proven to increase complexity". What evidence I present to him that he can't argue with? The best I can come up with is the example of nylonase (since there are aspects of the fossil record he doesn't accept).

Can anyone think of any better examples which take no more than a minute to explain?

I don't know what kind of information on complexity that he will take as evidence. If he understood evolution at all, his question would be asnwered. From single celled organisms to where we are now... I would say that is an increase in complexity Get him to define complexity, I would start there.

Here is a video about increased information.

 

[he_who_is_nobody]

First you need to ask the creationist what they mean by "increase complexity". If they mean new genes, than any mutation will work (i.e. nylonase). If they mean new structure, than you might have to give them an example of a new organ (i.e. Italian Wall Lizard). Ask the creationist to define his terms first.

 

[YesIAMJames]

Thanks, the Italian wall lizard is a good example but keep answers coming.

 

[EnDSchultz]

First you need to ask the creationist what they mean by "increase complexity". If they mean new genes, than any mutation will work (i.e. nylonase). If they mean new structure, than you might have to give them an example of a new organ (i.e. Italian Wall Lizard). Ask the creationist to define his terms first.

This. And make sure they're specific enough. If you don't make them commit to certain conditions defining "increased complexity" then they can always, ALWAYS just tell you "that's not good enough".

 

[TheFlyingBastard]

This. And make sure they're specific enough. If you don't make them commit to certain conditions defining "increased complexity" then they can always, ALWAYS just tell you "that's not good enough".

What he said. One of those most common tactics of evolution deniers who request evidence is shifting the goal posts. We've seen this in one of our debates already in which micah, who is debating someone on evolution again right now, ended up saying we just hate God after shifting the goal posts didn't work.
Don't fall into that trap; get them to define everything rigidly first. Ask questions about their definition before you go and prove it.

 

[ShootMyMonkey]

However one person actually gave me a valid answer "I would believe in evolution if evidence could be presented that evolution could be proven to increase complexity". What evidence I present to him that he can't argue with? The best I can come up with is the example of nylonase (since there are aspects of the fossil record he doesn't accept).

Can anyone think of any better examples which take no more than a minute to explain?

The interesting thing about this "increase in complexity" thing is that the very way evolution has to operate is through modifications of genetic info based on what is already present. Now in some cases, you have minor point mutations and frame shifts... sometimes you get gene duplication and the duplicates being independent of each other becomes a chance for new genes to develop... you get junk DNA being activated by a mutation which negates stop codes (which we know is precisely what happened with nylonase)... you occasionally get coding DNA becoming inactive, but depending on the context, this often has a risk of being fatal, especially if it has developed into a particularly crucial gene.

Even ERVs and the development of cancer by radiation is an increase in complexity because it's adding or modifying genes in ways that previously did not exist. I believe there are actually several dozen documented examples of newly developed genes just in the human genome alone. One that's getting a lot of notice lately is the CCR5 blocker gene which has been shown to be a product of random mutation, and has led to an appearance of AIDS immunity. This is a new trait that people have not otherwise had. We also know that this has already happened in other species which have had their versions of the AIDS virus for much longer than humans have -- hence why AIDS is a much more tolerated disease among cats and horses and even other great apes.

What's interesting about this is that all of these processes means you can modify or add new complexity, but in fact, there are more barriers to the reduction of complexity. It's MUCH harder to take away than to add. The only way we'd have trouble increasing complexity is if DNA replication was 100% perfect all the time.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

BTW, even if you assume that the only thing that can happen is random point mutations and no gene duplication or activation of junk DNA ever occurs, you still have the fact that those variations will be different across different members of a population, meaning you've already increased genetic diversity across the population, which by itself is an increase in information. In fact, random noise is exactly how you maximize the information.

I would also point him to this little sketch (it's not very long) --
http://www.pnas.org/content/97/9/4463.full

One of the points it makes is that variation alone doesn't make evolution, but having natural selection means you have a mechanism by which information about the environment is communicated to the organisms so that they can adapt.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

For other examples besides nylonase, you can throw in references as well... all of these containing documented examples of increases in complexity, as well as very highly precise descriptions of HOW they occurred --
Brown, C. J., K. M. Todd and R. F. Rosenzweig, 1998. Multiple duplications of yeast hexose transport genes in response to selection in a glucose-limited environment. Molecular Biology and Evolution 15(8): 931-942.

Lang, D. et al., 2000. Structural evidence for evolution of the beta/alpha barrel scaffold by gene duplication and fusion. Science 289: 1546-1550. See also Miles, E. W. and D. R. Davies, 2000. On the ancestry of barrels. Science 289: 1490.

Zhang, J., Y.-P. Zhang and H. F. Rosenberg, 2002. Adaptive evolution of a duplicated pancreatic ribonuclease gene in a leaf-eating monkey. Nature Genetics 30: 411-415. See also: Univ. of Michigan, 2002, How gene duplication helps in adapting to changing environments.

Lynch, M. and J. S. Conery, 2000. The evolutionary fate and consequences of duplicate genes. Science 290: 1151-1155. See also Pennisi, E., 2000. Twinned genes live life in the fast lane. Science 290: 1065-1066.

Alves, M. J., M. M. Coelho and M. J. Collares-Pereira, 2001. Evolution in action through hybridisation and polyploidy in an Iberian freshwater fish: a genetic review. Genetica 111(1-3): 375-385.

Lenski, R. E., 1995. Evolution in experimental populations of bacteria. In: Population Genetics of Bacteria, Society for General Microbiology, Symposium 52, S. Baumberg et al., eds., Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, pp. 193-215.

 

[Dragan Glas]

Greetings,

Not necessarily about "complexity", per se, but an interesting example of evolution in action.

Kindest regards,

James

 

[YesIAMJames]

That's pretty interesting but not going to convince him. It seems to me that he accepts evolution, it's the common decent bit he has issue with. He even accepts speciation but doesn't believe something can evolve to a different "kind" (though he offers no indication of what constitutes a change of kind). I think it would take new organs developing to convince him. The lizard example is probably the best I've got so far for this

 

[ShootMyMonkey]

That's pretty interesting but not going to convince him. It seems to me that he accepts evolution, it's the common decent bit he has issue with.

A good example to bring up here would be human chromosome #2. There's an important point about this particular example which shows exactly why evolution qualifies as a scientific theory and intelligent design/creationism never can.

So the whole thing with human chromosome #2 is that humans have one fewer pair of chromosomes than other primates. Because of this discrepancy, one of a few things would have to be true in order for common descent to be true -- a) 1 chromosome split at the point of divergence between humans and other apes, b) 2 ape chromosomes fused somewhere down the line of human descent, or c) 1 chromosome was lost. Well, based on what we know of genetics, c is impossible, there would be too much information loss, and the result would be fatal. "a" is possible, but unlikely seeing as how humans are the only ones that show this drop in chromosome count, and also we find that a lot of other primates which might have diverged from the great apes earlier also seem to have the extra chromosomes.... so that leaves b) as the only possibility. Sure enough, we found the site of a chromosome fusion, and the exact site down to the base pair number is known and documented.

So the point here is not so much that a fusion occurred, but that a prediction could be made based on the theory. Not only does evolution and common descent between humans and apes *predict* this outcome, but it actually HAS to be true in order for common descent to be true. If it wasn't, that alone would falsify common descent between man and apes. Not only is it a prediction, but it's actually quite a specific and unshakable prediction.

ID creationism, otoh, can at most offer "that's the way the designer made it" as an explanation for the discrepancy... but even if there was no discrepancy, or even if chromosomes were lost, or if you could find that it was actually a chromosome split rather than a fusion, all of those would have the same explanation... ID creationism cannot offer a specific position, and it is therefore neither validated nor negated by any data. If you can't show a well-defined and immutable condition for falsifying the idea, it can't be a theory. Evolution has this, and ID basically never will.

--------------------------------------------------------------------

On a separate note, the idea of accepting evolution, but having a problem with common descent highlights something I've mentioned before. People have a problem with the idea of humans not being exalted in some special position as if we're above all other forms of life. Evolution puts us as just another species in the same struggle for survival as everything else. On the other hand, religion says that God holds humanity as special and is concerned especially with our affairs and gives a damn about us more than everything else combined.

He even accepts speciation but doesn't believe something can evolve to a different "kind" (though he offers no indication of what constitutes a change of kind).

What is worth questioning then is also to turn it back around to him as to what sort of barrier he thinks exist between so-called "kinds"? I mean, changes accumulate, and because you have all the baggage of a prior evolutionary history, it does take more work to amount a drastic variation in a population which has a large amount of genetic information, but what exactly stops changes and genetic variation from accumulating until you get huge changes? I mean, we know, for instance that a wild grass can eventually become corn(maize)... we know this because we did it. That's a pretty drastic change, and although it might look like a change into a new "kind", it's technically a case of microevolution.

One thing here is that people who don't know a damn thing about evolution often view it as this sort of linear transition, and that's exactly what it can never be. Speciation is a pattern of divergence, after all, so it's not that you get transformation from one "kind" to another, but rather that new "kinds" which never existed before are actually born. They try to use canards like dogs turning into cats, and what evolution actually suggests is that if anything catlike were to develop from dogs, what you'd have would be neither dog nor cat, but more closely related to dogs since it would have canine ancestry.

 

[EnDSchultz]

I second what the previous poster said.

1. Make him define what he considers a "kind" to be. And not just "Oh, well, dogs are a kind, cats are a kind", but what features, patterns, or lack of features define those as separate "kinds". Also, not to long ago, AronRa posted a great video on canine phylogeny that you'll surely find useful (cats and dogs are very popular categories of "kind" Creationists like to use as examples).

2. Have him give some sort of explanation of what sorts of demonstrable barriers exist which prevent "kinds" from crossing over into one another. I suspect he'll try to point out they are unable to interbreed...but then show him a picture of a wolf and and African wild dog and ask him if they're the same kind...He'll probably say yes but it turns out they are not interfertile.

3. After all this, explain to him how evolution is a branching process rather than a linear progression, and therefore it never suggests what he probably considers it to be: the linear crossover from one extant lineage to another one. In other words, we see a common ancestor branching into chimps and humans; what he probably sees is an arrow pointing from chimps to humans. This is, of course, purely absurd.

 

[TheFlyingBastard]

1. Make him define what he considers a "kind" to be. And not just "Oh, well, dogs are a kind, cats are a kind", but what features, patterns, or lack of features define those as separate "kinds". Also, not to long ago, AronRa posted a great video on canine phylogeny that you'll surely find useful (cats and dogs are very popular categories of "kind" Creationists like to use as examples).

Incidentally, when I asked my creationist mother how she defines a "kind", she first said "same type of animal, like a dog or a cat". After some more pressure for an objective definition she ended up saying "animals that make the same sound" in a voice that said she knew it was bullshit.

Asking for that definition works.

 

[EnDSchultz]

Then clearly, parrots are members of many different kinds. Including humankind!

 

[ImprobableJoe]

Here's a completely different direction to take, that might actually shut up a creationist:

Complexity is an interesting thing. Imperfect processes are very complex, and as they get better they get less complex (and smaller). An iPod is smaller and has fewer moving parts than a 1960s supercomputer. It is in many ways LESS complex, because it shows better design. To then complain that evolution doesn't produce higher complexity is to say that evolution is more efficient than a process that would produce a higher level of complexity.

It also shows that a more complex system is a sign of bad and less competent design. Creationists point to the complexity of the universe as evidence of their "God", who they claim is perfect and all-powerful. However, since the complexity of a system is inversely proportionate to the power of the system (and by inference its creator), it seems that a complex universe is evidence AGAINST an all-powerful creator. A more skilled creator makes less complex creations. A MOST SKILLED creator would create something with either zero or at least absolutely minimum complexity. Complexity argues against a designer, not for one.

 

[borrofburi]

1. Make him define what he considers a "kind" to be. And not just "Oh, well, dogs are a kind, cats are a kind", but what features, patterns, or lack of features define those as separate "kinds". Also, not to long ago, AronRa posted a great video on canine phylogeny that you'll surely find useful (cats and dogs are very popular categories of "kind" Creationists like to use as examples).

And depending on what your opponent is, you'll get different responses. If your opponent cares about truth, then thinking through this alone should get him to concede a little bit of ground to you. But if he's willfully ignorant for jesus, or a liar for jesus, and halfway intelligent, then he'll absolutely refuse to define this rigidly, he'll keep using bullshit and vague words, like "form and structure" (which is meaningless until he defines precisely what constitutes a different form or a different structure (note that those words are not bullshit in and of themselves, they actually have definitions in a scientific context but NEVER assume that the creationist understands or accepts the scientific definition, because if they did than they would already accept evolution (or would be liars for jesus))).

I like to say this: if I'm given any two fossils how can I tell if they're the same kind or not ("I know it when I see it" is NOT acceptable in science, because it is neither rigid nor objective)?

Complexity is an interesting thing. Imperfect processes are very complex, and as they get better they get less complex (and smaller). An iPod is smaller and has fewer moving parts than a 1960s supercomputer. It is in many ways LESS complex, because it shows better design. To then complain that evolution doesn't produce higher complexity is to say that evolution is more efficient than a process that would produce a higher level of complexity.

It also shows that a more complex system is a sign of bad and less competent design. Creationists point to the complexity of the universe as evidence of their "God", who they claim is perfect and all-powerful. However, since the complexity of a system is inversely proportionate to the power of the system (and by inference its creator), it seems that a complex universe is evidence AGAINST an all-powerful creator. A more skilled creator makes less complex creations. A MOST SKILLED creator would create something with either zero or at least absolutely minimum complexity. Complexity argues against a designer, not for one.

This isn't completely true... For instance regular expressions are complicated and difficult, yet extremely powerful (in the sense that a few characters can easily partition the space of all strings). Of course, it depends on your definition of "complicated" whether regular expressions are complicated or not, but if you define "complicated" in such a way as regular expressions aren't complicated, I can show you something else that is complicated according to that definition but also powerful.

More interestingly: the more random something is the more information is contained in it. Of course, this will then lead to a debate about information theory, which of course means you'll now be trying to educate them on two different subjects at once.

 

[ImprobableJoe]

This isn't completely true... For instance regular expressions are complicated and difficult, yet extremely powerful (in the sense that a few characters can easily partition the space of all strings). Of course, it depends on your definition of "complicated" whether regular expressions are complicated or not, but if you define "complicated" in such a way as regular expressions aren't complicated, I can show you something else that is complicated according to that definition but also powerful.

More interestingly: the more random something is the more information is contained in it. Of course, this will then lead to a debate about information theory, which of course means you'll now be trying to educate them on two different subjects at once.

I'm not willing to think too hard about this, but at a guess I would say that the places where what I posted isn't completely true are places where an equivocation fallacy would occur. That is to say that where they accept my definition of complexity, they would be forced to accept that my conclusions are correct. Where my conclusions might be said to be incorrect, it would likely require shifting the meaning of "complexity" to mean something beyond the scope of my statements.

 

[borrofburi]

This isn't completely true... For instance regular expressions are complicated and difficult, yet extremely powerful (in the sense that a few characters can easily partition the space of all strings). Of course, it depends on your definition of "complicated" whether regular expressions are complicated or not, but if you define "complicated" in such a way as regular expressions aren't complicated, I can show you something else that is complicated according to that definition but also powerful.

More interestingly: the more random something is the more information is contained in it. Of course, this will then lead to a debate about information theory, which of course means you'll now be trying to educate them on two different subjects at once.

I'm not willing to think too hard about this, but at a guess I would say that the places where what I posted isn't completely true are places where an equivocation fallacy would occur. That is to say that where they accept my definition of complexity, they would be forced to accept that my conclusions are correct. Where my conclusions might be said to be incorrect, it would likely require shifting the meaning of "complexity" to mean something beyond the scope of my statements.

Possibly... Also my example is a human engineering marvel, but surely an omnipotent god could do better... Of course now we're back to something like the problem of suffering, only now it's the problem of complexity (in that both have the common "surely omnipotence could do better").

 

[ImprobableJoe]

Possibly... Also my example is a human engineering marvel, but surely an omnipotent god could do better... Of course now we're back to something like the problem of suffering, only now it's the problem of complexity (in that both have the common "surely omnipotence could do better").

It is great that you're feeding me stuff that lets me comment without having to think too much... I am celebrating the survival of a week's worth of midterms and the finals for a 7-week compressed macroeconomics class. I researched and wrote a 3100-word macroeconomics paper on Monday in less than 8 hours, and then studied for and got good grades on two midterms and a final exam. There's so much beer in my future that if I die tonight you could jam a spigot into my chest tomorrow and get everyone drunk at my wake. :lol:

I have a really good answer to omnipotence, which is that it doesn't matter. I don't have to be capable of conceiving of a perfect world to be able to conceive of a world just a little bit better. If I can imagine something even .00000000000001% better than what exists, an all-powerful being should have been able to create at least that much. If not, that all-powerful being doesn't exist, because even a marginally better being could have done marginally better.

 

[borrofburi]

I have a really good answer to omnipotence, which is that it doesn't matter. I don't have to be capable of conceiving of a perfect world to be able to conceive of a world just a little bit better. If I can imagine something even .00000000000001% better than what exists, an all-powerful being should have been able to create at least that much. If not, that all-powerful being doesn't exist, because even a marginally better being could have done marginally better.

They would of course argue that there's some factor you haven't taken into account that makes our world actually better than that one... Which I never really liked because it amounts to "god *had* to do it this way", which is an awfully restricted omnipotence.

 

[ImprobableJoe]

They would of course argue that there's some factor you haven't taken into account that makes our world actually better than that one... Which I never really liked because it amounts to "god *had* to do it this way", which is an awfully restricted omnipotence.

The answer is that whatever "factor" they come up with can't be bigger than an omnipotent being.