u/etherified

From across the creationist world we've heard that there is "no known mechanism whereby mutations can introduce new information into the genome". This mantra is repeated so very, very often, but it obviously isn't and can't be true. If you believe it is true, however, then come, let us reason together.

It might be helpful for us to lay it out in a manner so simple that a 5-year-old would agree. I sincerely don't mean that in a condescending way, I just mean to say that we can simplify it enough into a plain and clear principle that all should be able to agree on, as an objective fact.

So, we could present a collection of elements (letters) that code for one single thing, let's use:

"cart"

That's one "item" of information, coding for "a small wheeled vehicle used to haul things". Now, we can duplicate that word as many times as we want:

cart
cart
cart

but alas, we'll still have just one item of information, "cart". We haven't added any new information.

However, now that we have more than one instance of that same item, any mutation may be introduced into any one of them, leaving the original one(s) as is:

cart
cart
dart

We now have increased our number of "items" of different information, now having one that encodes: "a small pointed object that can be thrown".

Now, we did that by a simple "point" mutation, but surprisingly (or perhaps not), we can even reduce our total volume of elements (letters), and still increase the amount of information:

cart
car
dart

Here we've removed (deleted) an element (letter), yet we've managed to increase our number of items again, now having a sequence that encodes "a driven vehicle that can transport humans/cargo".

That's it. That's the mechanism. It's such a very simple principle, that the statement:

"no known mechanism exists whereby mutations can introduce new information into the genome"

should be abandoned forever as simply not corresponding to the reality that can be demonstrated in very simple terms.

Addendum: Gene duplications are known to be extremely common, relatively cost-free (usually not deleterious, since they leave working copies of genes intact). And are free to mutate and expand the genome by increasing encoding space. Moreover, uncountable examples of related genes are known, throughout most organisms, having artefacts showing they were clearly duplicates at some point. Gene duplication is a very, very well-established mechanism.

And once you have a new duplicate, any change in one, even a deletion or "loss", not to mention an addition, substitution or block insertion, adds new information to the genome that was not there before. That information may or may not be useful, or even viable, but it is new informational content in that genome, because the nucleotides ACTG all have inherent meaning in that context.

Moreover, so long as the open reading frame can still be transcribed and expressed, there will be a new protein produced that was not being produced before. New content based on the new information.

It should be very clear, therefore, that the claim of "no known mechanism" for new information arising in the genome is simply, undeniably, and objectively incorrect.

AnswersInGenesis and other YEC apologists make a very big deal about why current suffering is all because of the "fall" from an originally "very good" creation. It could even be called the basis of their entire worldview, given how much it is repeated. It is, in summary, their explanation for the "problem of suffering".

Presumably, as the story goes, Yahweh made this perfect world with all the animals (and 2 original humans) living in perfect harmony: no death, no suffering, grass-eating T-Rex's and spiders that made webs for, one assumes, pure decoration, rather than a death trap for flying insects. A veritable paradise for... how long, a few days? A month? Who knows.

But then those two first humans mucked it all up by casually disobeying a single command, and that one action turned this "very good" creation into a nightmare dog-eat-dog world requiring survival of the fittest, and making most animals spend most of their resources just trying to stay alive by not getting eaten or succumbing to parasites. In other words, it resulted in the world we now inhabit.

I would submit that a major fundamental problem with all of this (and there are many), is thinking that it could have been declared a "very good" creation at all. Even given their mythology, that "pre-fall World" may have appeared to be a paradise, but in fact it was instead a powder keg waiting to ignite at the smallest act of disobedience. That cannot by any means be considered a "very good" creation.

Any objective analysis must admit that from the start it was exceptionally prone to failure, and God (the omniscient character in this story) must have known that. But when you create something that is supposed to be durable but can break against the slightest resistance, you have not created a "very good" product, but an inferior piece of crap.
Either God knew this and went ahead with it anyway, or was shocked when Adam&Eve kicked it all to hell in a single day.

Suddenly, spiders acquired a taste for insect protein. Dinosaurs (yes, dinosaurs) and other predators looked at their own teeth and realized they could be used for tearing through flesh instead of only plants, and upon giving it a try, realized just how delicious fresh lacerated meat could be. And they never looked back. Cancer, fungus, heart disease, rabies, starvation, autoimmune disease, all became things.

Basically, the whole beautiful creation just went crazy, fell apart, and that's the world we live in now. All because of one act by one of the created beings.

So, built-in obsolesence? A hidden defect or weakness? God failing to foresee an unavoidable vulnerability in his own product? YEC doctrine doesn't tell us, but whatever the case, it was not "very good" if it was one gentle tripwire away from destruction.