Sorry to have injected a separate dog example (Labradors versus wolves) into another thread, without citing all the references you provide here. Nice work.

http://jhered.oxfordjournals.o.....0/1/71.pdf

of special note:
Some sequences found in dogs were identical to those in wolves…
The sequence divergence within dogs was surprisingly large: the mean sequence divergence in dogs 2.06 + or – 0.07% was almost identical to the 2.10 + or – 0.04% (sequence divergence) found within wolves. (notice that sequence divergence is slightly smaller for the population of dogs than for the population of wolves)
Coupled with the diverse morphology of domesticated dogs and known hazards of dog breeding, this evidence strongly indicates “front loaded adaptations” at a loss of information from parent species. Thus, this is genetic confirmation of the principle of Genetic Entropy for dogs from wolves!

Of special note for the Mexican hairless dog (chihuahas);

many founder halotypes were likely lost because of “genetic drift”

The gene that determines hairlessness is nt but lethal when homozygous.

Thus clearly the “mutation” that causes hairlessness is not a gain in information.

This following paper is more recent and more concrete in establishing the principle of Genetic Entropy for dogs/wolves:

Origin of dogs traced

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/sci.....498669.stm

of special note:

Their findings, reported in the journal Science, point to the existence of probably three founding females – the so-called “Eves” of the dog world.

They conclude that intensive breeding by humans over the last 500 years – not different genetic origins – is responsible for the dramatic differences in appearance among modern dogs.

and the paper itself:

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/.....type=HWCIT

Genetic Evidence for an East Asian Origin of Domestic Dogs

Peter Savolainen,1* Ya-ping Zhang,2 Jing Luo,2dagger Joakim Lundeberg,1 Thomas Leitner3

The origin of the domestic dog from wolves has been established, but the number of founding events, as well as where and when these occurred, is not known. To address these questions, we examined the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) sequence variation among 654 domestic dogs representing all major dog populations worldwide. Although our data indicate several maternal origins from wolf, >95% of all sequences belonged to three phylogenetic groups universally represented at similar frequencies, suggesting a common origin from a single gene pool for all dog populations. A larger genetic variation in East Asia than in other regions and the pattern of phylogeographic variation suggest an East Asian origin for the domestic dog, ~15,000 years ago.

Digdug,
How did they trace the lineages?

They traced it by the loss of genetic variation (the loss of “front loaded” information.

Digdug, Is that enough hard proof for you buddy?

It definitely questions evolution for me because there is no new novel information that I can see, only a culling of preexisting information.
And in case of the Mexican Hairless, the proof of a % ” mutation that turns out to be somewhat beneficial for the hot climate its in.

These studies or all fine and well with the ID/Genetic Entropy mo^del and do not help establish the case for evolution at all.

And to think Dawkin’s used dog breeding as “proof” of evolution.

If Dawkin’s has to resort to this “dog breeding” evidence for scientific proof of evolution he is clearly deluding himself for the molecular studies point to Genetic Entropy.

I never claimed that chihuahas were ‘proof’ of evolution. I did claim that they make hash out of this gen^etic entropy nonsense which does not stand up to first principle logical inspection either.

Now, with regards to this evidence, do you have some citations? Particularly I am interested in what genetic ‘information’ was originally present in the wolf and how the heck anyone knows that. Or are they looking at wolves alive today?

Do you believe that all members of a species have the same traits? If not what sense does it make to talk about the genetic ‘information’ that was originally present in ‘the wolf’? Which wolf? surely you mean an individual wolf? sounds like it.

have you attempted to mate a chihuaha with a fox or a wolf? sounds like you need some experiments to test your ideas before you assert them. I’m interested and perhaps you are 100% cor^rect but in order to convince the scientific com^munity you will need to get past wikipedia handwaving and idle speculation.

You say the Chihuahua is “proof” of evolution.

Well we disagree, so we go get the genetic evidence that is now available.

What does the evidence say?

It say the Chihuahua, as well as all other sub-species of wolves have a narrow subset of the information that was originally present in the wolf. This is just what the Genetic Entropy mo^del predicts.

Much like a sculptor removing the parts of marble that are not parts of what he finally wants to sculpt, so is the parent species genome compared to the sub-species, and since mutational studies overwhelming confirm no new information/marble is being created, this analogy is very fitting to what is happening in the genome upon sub-speciation events.

It is the “culling” of information in the genome of the wolf to the Chihuahua that crushing to evolutionary thought, for evolution must prove the origination of information/marble in the first place, whereas Genetic Entropy, which traces its assertions to foundational principles of science, expects this culling to occur 100% of the time.

Truly, digdug this is a simple mod^el (the front loaded ID/Genetic Entropy mo^del). The mo^del is extremely robust to all lines of evidence coming in, whereas your evolution mo^del is “surprised” over and over again by the evidence.

Where is your skepticism of evolution itself? Or do you unfairly hold ID accountable to high levels of skepticism while never questioning the claims of evolution?

As far as true science is concerned both theories are suspect until a high level of proof is met, Yet you treat evolution as if it has already randomly transmutated a bacteria into a different type of bacteria, when it has done no such thing.

Shoot digdug, it is commonly known that all mutations to bacteria are harmful in some way.

The so called super-germs in hospitals are really super-wimpy germs, and are quickly out-competed in the real world by the “parent” bacteria when they are forced to compete with the “parent” bacteria.

But what you are saying implies that chihuahas are a subset of wolves. where are the wolves that look like chihuahas? if what you say is true regarding ‘information being in there somewhere and intelligence pulls it out’ then according to mendelian principles there should be occasional chihuahas born to wolves. i have never heard of this, but i will see of wikipedia has anything to say about it.

B^A, you have a prediction for your adaptation = loss of genetic ‘information’. You should see if you can test it!

I imagine that there are probably lots of ID labs that would love to have a new student. This is exactly the sort of thing that can get ID on the map. I suppose you will have to learn some molecular techniques, but someone else may have already done all the work. I think you may have to come up with a good working definition of ‘information’ as it pertains to this problem, and i don’t think anyone has done that either so that would be a great first stroke. On the other hand, it should be easy enough to avoid that issue by ignoring it. I am not sure what is the best route, are you? This is exciting. Where do you think you might go to test this idea? Is Behe taking new students?

Can you read? The reference comes from Wikipedia. Go there and nit pick and tell them where they are wrong.

Apparently a Chihuahua and a wolf can breed and if you want to call it a hybrid, go ahead. One of the definitions of a species is the ability to breed. So according to this definition the wolf and Chihuahua are kissing cousins. Roof, roof!

This discussion is going no where. You are not trying to understand anything. Adios.

recombination is another way to derive new characters and function. See the introgression of European genotypes into N American genotypes of the reed Phragmites, followed by adaptive radiation into new habitats.

this can’t be a function of ‘already existing genetic material’ because we are talking about distinct lineages coming back into contact, not a single population.

If two separate lineages of the same parent species, have not been reproductively isolated and are still able to reproduce, the information that was lost in partial sub-speciation is gained in the offspring, yet still does not add up to more information than the original information content of the parent species, Thus genetic entropy is violated how by this example?

Shoot, digdug this is common practice in domestic animal breeding programs to prevent problems with inbreeding. Yet your problem with evolution still remains for you must demonstrate how “new” “meaningful” information is generated in the first place. You are just playing games with the evidence.

Dr. Behe has clearly pointed out,in Edge of Evolution”, this has not been accomplished by a long shot.

Oh well, though I should know better than to get into this with you:

getawitness you stated:

the total amount of Shannon information in the genome can increase naturally:

To which I note many commenter’s have derided Shannon’s definition of Information:

Karl Steinbeck, a German information scientist: “The classical theory of information (Shannon Information) can be compared to the statement that one kilogram of gold has the same value as one kilogram of sand”.

Warren Weaver, an American information scientist: “Two messages, one of which is heavily loaded with meaning and the other which is pure nonsense, can be exactly equivalent … as regards (Shannon) information.”

Ernst von Weizacker “The reason for the ‘uselessness’ of Shannon’s theory in the different sciences is frankly that no science can limit itself to its syntactic level.”

Jean Cocteau: “The greatest literary work of art is basically nothing but a scrambled alphabet (according to Shannon’s Theory).”

Now as for specific formula for CSI I cannot do that right now, (I believe Dr. Dembski covers the boundaries of for CS! in his book “No Free Lunch” (NFL):

http://www.arn.org/docs/dembski/wd_nfl_intro.htm

of special note from NFL:

Chapter 5: The Emergence of Irreducibly Complex Systems.

One of the objections against intelligent design becoming a viable scientific research program is that one cannot calculate the probabilities needed to confirm specified complexity for actual systems in nature. This chapter shows that even though precise calculations may not always be possible, setting bounds for the relevant probabilities is possible, and that this is adequate for establishing specified complexity in practice.

Though I don’t have a copy of the book, I can give you the (very) rough way I would figure out if a Irreducibly Complex (IC) system was exhibiting a tangible amount of CSI in biology.

1. I would find total number of different proteins in a IC system.

2. I would find the probability for each specific protein occurring by pure chance in the universe. (I would adjust for the fact that other proteins of different sequences may perform same function (note:this specific step is what gives the definition of CSI its specificity to actual information content )

3. I would add each probability up for each protein in the IC system.

If the probability for all proteins in the IC system exceeded the probabilistic resources of the universe (10^150), then in my rough measure I would declare the system does indeed contain complex specified information.

Since this ignores the related but required information in the many other systems that interelate with the IC system it is clearly incomplete in its definition and far short of the true CSI present.

As for overcoming this, CSI hurdle, for already existent proteins generating further CSI, that is somewhat what Dr. Behe addressed in his book “Edge of Evolution”, on the empirical level, when he went down to the protein level of micro-organisms and searched for IC being generated in the micro-organisms. And what did He find? For malaria,,NOTHING! for HIV,,, very little! Despite tremendous mutational firepower HIV demonstrated a trivial complexity being generated, for what Dr. Behe termed a simple “passive leaky pore or weak channel” ring structure.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/blog/A3DGRQ0IO7KYQ2

” although there apparently are five or so copies of Vpu in the viroporin complex, that does not mean that five binding sites developed. Only one new binding site need develop for one area of a protein which binds to a different area of the same protein, to form a homogeneous complex with, say, C5 symmetry. That is all that is required for a circularly symmetric structure to form. Second, the viroporin is not some new molecular machine. There is no evidence that it exerts its effect in, say, an ATP- or energy-dependent manner. Rather, similar to other viroporins, the protein simply forms a passive leaky pore or weak channel. (4,5) This situation is probably best viewed as a foreign protein degrading the integrity of a membrane, rather than performing some positive function.”
Dr.Behe

I haven’t even really tried to figure the math behind the “existent” protein that accomplished the “passive leaky pore” ring structure in HIV but my guess is that it will fall well within the expected probability for the resources and time at its disposal in this universe.

But this is all kind of Non sequitur for Darwinism anyway, since common sense would dictate we should be seeing a whole lot more than a “passive leaky pore” being generated with something experiencing far more mutational events than have happened since for all life since reptiles and mammals have been presumed to split.

But if you really want to figure a hard number for CSI of a IC system (I think the whole cell will be found to be IC by the way), it shouldn’t be that hard to figure out using a refinement of the method I described above.

note to Digdug:

So one ciclid has a mouth on the right side and one on the left, but both are more closely related to the “parent” stock than to each other.
And this disproves genetic entropy how?

I set DNA sequence diversity is less for the left and right mouth chiclids than it is for the “parent stock too”

In fact the more specialized a cichlid becomes, the less the sequence divergence will be for the cichlid species, as well the greater will be the problems for inbreeding.

Again how does this disprove Genetic Entropy?

“Descends from” does not mean “is a subset of”. Are you arguing that the aboriginal wolf population contained some chihuahas?

it seems that your gen^etic entropy mo^del has some ontological issues with the reality of hybrids. have you ever considered this?

From wikipedia dog

“Molecular systematics indicate that the domestic dog (Canis lupus familiaris) descends from one or more populations of wild wolves (Canis lupus). As reflected in the nomenclature, dogs are descended from the wolf and are able to interbreed with wolves.”

Let’s mate the Chihuahua and a wolf and see what we get. Maybe best in show?

So it is possible that all the cichlids were descended from an original cichlid population and what we are seeing is the variation in the original population pool playing itself out over time. I am sure there are some mutation events that have added something but cichlids are still cichlids.

Again the definitive analysis is in the future when mapping genomes gets cheap and quick and comparison of different varieties are easily done.