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Saturday, June 26, 2010

More Creationist Tripe from AiG

On the page for the "12 arguments" that I went through in my previous post, there was a link on the side to a 40 minute video lecture. Here's the link to the video if anyone else wants to torture their ears, eyes and brain.

I was just watching to see/hear the latest creationist material. Gotta be up to date with what the enemies of reason are doing!

After watching 13 minutes of it, I had to stop. I simply couldn't gloss over this lie they were preaching. The first 13 minutes was by no means lacking in fallacies and lies, but this one trumped any previous ones. I'll try typing out the quote for you.

"Well a mutation is basically a copying mistake, it's a 'typo' in your DNA, so one of those little genes has been switched. Suppose you have a dog with genes for four normal legs, which all dogs should have, but there's a mutation a copying mistake and so that gene doesn't get copied properly and so you end up with a dog with short stubby little legs because his legs didn't quite form properly because he's missing a little bit of information, and that's key to understand. Mutations are really a loss of information."
I've bolded the egregious liar's blatantly incorrect statements.

To begin with, there are many different types of mutation, "gene switching" is not one of them. After about 20 seconds on the wikipedia page for mutation I found all I needed to know about different types of mutations, which is obviously much more time than the AiG con artist spent looking.
Small scale mutations (dealing with small genes and individual nucleotides): Point mutations, insertions, deletions.
Large scale mutations (usually dealing with chromosomes): Gene duplication, deletions, gene-fusion, chromosomal translocation, interstitial deletions, chromosomal inversions and allele-loss.
If I had actually studied genetics at an academic level I would have probably been able to mention those off the top of my head, but after a brief excursion to.... ummm nearly anywhere on the Internet.... I now know a lot more about mutations than AiG do. Only a small number of these types of mutations actually constitute a loss of information. All of the rest would most certainly be classified as a gain in information, whether or not the mutation has any effect at all is not relevant. According to the working definition used by the AiG lecturer, this would constitute an increase in information.

On top of that there have been several instances where 'information' increases have been observed through mutation. Most notably the Richard Lenski experiments which I have mentioned in the past. Now this information isn't exactly a secret, so I have no qualms in calling anyone peddling creationist propaganda a lying bastard. These vermin prey on the ignorant and the impressionable and to what end? Surely they must have some kind of sociopathic mental disorder to engage in such vile deceit. A google search would turn up hundreds, if not thousands of pages on the internet where accurate information is obtainable. For example TalkOrigins has an excellent refutation of the idea that Mutations don't cause an increase in information.

That's enough of that video. I can't bear to watch any more. This post was only about a short 30 second segment of a 40 minute video.

6 comments:

  1. Another creationist, who doesn't understand how DNA and genetic mutations work. I can't say that I'm surprised.

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  2. I actually have been pinging blogrolling, though it's weird that now mine showed up at the top of the list yesterday... Have you not been seeing it in the queue lately?

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  3. Your Google ad is a comical graphic about Darwin falling in 2013.

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  4. ThatAtheistChick, yeah it's not particularly surprising that he has no clue is it? I guess we kinda expect them to have no idea what they're talking about by now.
    Drew, yeah I haven't been seeing your blog in the list.
    libhom, Yeah I've seen those ads too, rather funny if you ask me =D

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  5. Interesting. Because when I do ping I see my site at the top of the list. :-/

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  6. Perhaps I just haven't been online when you've pinged it =D

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