You have helped me over the years to distinguish complexity from
information, i.e. the same information can be rearranged in different ways,
and this rearrangement does increase the complexity. With that
understanding, one would have to concede that reading the fossil record as
animals through time would indeed show an increase in complexity from
bottom to top, even if the organisms at the top are themselves no more
complex than those at the bottom, because they are different. Although I
don't accept the reading of the fossil record as simply animals through
time, I think a clear case can be made for no increase in biochemical
information from bottom to top. Now that we have the complete genome of
Caenorhabditis elegans in our hands, and we find at least 40% of the genes
in C elegans are present in humans, this point becomes even more emphatic.
The first organisms we find as fossils were already fully as complex in
terms of their molecular biology as any modern form. If you want to read
the fossil record as animals through time, you could still justify
considering that an increase in complexity for the reasons I cite above.
>
>Your previous post (you've been up to a lot of mischief lately :)
Yeah, well, Glenn is gone for a while....
>brought out a very important point which also applies to the
>present situation, namely that its essential to understand the
>difference between the facts and the theories which attempt to
>explain those facts. I think what we are talking about here is
>the attempt to ascertain what the facts are.
Agreed.
Looking at the
>history of life, can we determine whether there is any direction
>to evolution? If so, is it a direction towards increasing
>complexity? One can hardly fault a theory at this point unless,
>of course, the facts (once determined) are at odds with what
>the theory predicts. But it is not just evolutionary models
>which must test themselves against the facts. How would a
>Young Earth Creationist deal with the fact that life has been
>around for billions of years? They would probably deny. But
>then why would they propose to test one theory (evolution)
>and not another theory (Special Creation) with the same data that
>they also deny is accurate?
I agree most emphatically. Unfortunately I seem to be pretty lonely in
this position.
And suppose that it were indeed
>shown that the history of life shows no direction towards
>"improvement" or towards increasing complexity. How would a
>Progressive Creationist deal with these sorts of facts?
That would present a problem to progressive creationists. But if my
understanding of the meaning of complexity as you have seemed to use it is
correct, then it is not possible to read the record as other than showing
an increase in complexity, unless one could show that all organisms were
already present in the Cambrian, and at present that is a statement of faith.