CB102 Mutations adding information
Claim CB102:
Mutations are random noise; they do not add information. Evolution cannot cause an increase in information.
Source:
AIG, n.d. Creation Education Center.
Doing a Report on Creation vs. Evolution Answers in Genesis
Response:
- It is hard to understand how anyone could make this claim, since anything mutations can do, mutations can undo. Some mutations add information to a genome; some subtract it. Creationists get by with this claim only by leaving the term "information" undefined, impossibly vague, or constantly shifting. By any reasonable definition, increases in information have been observed to evolve. We have observed the evolution of
- increased genetic variety in a population (Lenski 1995; Lenski et al. 1991)
- increased genetic material (Alves et al. 2001; Brown et al. 1998; Hughes and Friedman 2003; Lynch and Conery 2000; Ohta 2003)
- novel genetic material (Knox et al. 1996; Park et al. 1996)
- novel genetically-regulated abilities (Prijambada et al. 1995)