1. Interviewer asks Dawkins for an example of a genetic mutation or an evolutionary process which can be seen to increase the information in the genome.
2. Dawkins thinks for a while…
3. Dawkins goes off on one about fish and reptiles…nothing to do with the original question.
I’m sure we could all be a bit more graceful, except this is a man who is now forging a career out of making TV programs depicting all religious people as stupid or evil.
The idea of random mutations and natural selection producing limited beneficial changes in a species is completely uncontroversial. The idea of the same mechanisms producing the human genome from nothing is fantasy, but it’s a fantasy that forms the cornerstone of materialism, so it persists.
September 19th, 2007 at 7:55 am
Perhaps you could check online to find out what actually happened:
http://www.skeptics.com.au/jou.....expose.htm
Perhaps you can remove your post, but I guess that you are a liar in the same way as these particular creationists are.
September 19th, 2007 at 7:07 pm
Perhaps if you are going to accuse me of being a liar, you could not hide behind anonymity.
That article was written before the uneditted version of the video was made public. Phillip Johnson described this in The Wedge of Truth:
Eventually the tape made its way to Barry Williams, the editor of an Australian journal called The Skeptic, who consulted with Dawkins and then published a blistering article with the title “Creationist Deception Exposed.” Williams at first seemed to be accusing the filmmakers of altering the tape by substituting a question Dawkins was never asked, but that accusation was never made explicitly and in any case was dropped after the creationists produced the raw tapes.
Anyway, Dawkins excuse, which boils down to “I realised they were evil creationists – so I paused to consider throwing them out of my house!”, doesn’t make sense. Why did he think the question was a “creationist” question? If Darwinism is a proven reality then why couldn’t he just give an example? Why did he give a completely unrelated answer if he was thinking about throwing the interviewers out. Why don’t you just answer the question for him instead of accusing people of being liars?
September 19th, 2007 at 10:12 pm
As Dawkins rightly pointed out “only a creationist would ask such a question.” Just take a look at the changes that human beings have made to dogs in the last 10,000 years. Or, more recently changes that exposure to plant species to radiation has created “improvements”. It can be seen in the laboratory that genetic mutations can increase information content.
It is a truly trivial question.
Of course if information cannot come out of matter as creationists continually like to remind us, then where did God get his information?
September 19th, 2007 at 10:26 pm
I’m so glad you used dog breeding as an example. If its so trivial, please explain to me how this has increased the information in the dog genome, bearing in mind that 1000s of years of artificial breeding, has produced only more dogs.
PS. I’m seriously considering banning anonymous comments because people tend to be much more rude when they don’t have to leave their name.
September 19th, 2007 at 11:08 pm
Can you give me an example of plants being “improved” by exposing them to radiation??? That’s nonsense.
God isn’t matter. What God actually is, is a question of philosophy. We don’t have to know the answer, to know that functional information cannot be generated by undirected processes.
September 20th, 2007 at 7:51 am
What exactly would you expect 1000s of years of dog breeding to produce? A horse perhaps.
After all millions of years of chimpanzee evolution has only produced more chimpanzees, which is what humans are.
Here is an article (not in depth) but if you wish to look the irraditation of plants go ahead:
http://www.safe-food.org/-news/2000-01-31.html
Are the changes induced by radiation not new information?
Go ahead and ban people. Going from your other posts you clearly cannot answer any questions, so it is probably for the best.
September 20th, 2007 at 7:14 pm
What exactly would you expect 1000s of years of dog breeding to produce? A horse perhaps.
It was you who said that dog breeding was an example of information being added to a genome.
Anyway dog breeding is artificial selection – more akin to intelligent design than undirected evolution.
After all millions of years of chimpanzee evolution has only produced more chimpanzees, which is what humans are.
If you watch to the end of that video, Dawkins will explain that sentence is completely wrong – not even Darwinists think humans evolved from chimpanzees which are a modern species.
Irradiating plants may create some interesting mutant plants which are better than the original in one way, but you can be sure that the mutations did more damage than good.
Go ahead and ban people
I’m not banning anyone. I just don’t want people using anonymity as a cover for being rude.