Evolutionists teach that one-celled organisms have given rise to all the different kinds we have today. In each case, the DNA ‘recipe’ has had to undergo a massive net increase of information during the alleged millions of years. A one-celled organism does not have the instructions for how to manufacture eyes, ears, blood, skin, hooves, brains, etc. So for protozoa to have given rise to ponies, for example, there would have to be some mechanism that gives rise to new information.
The reality is that selection on its own always gets rid of information, never the opposite. To have a way to add information, the ‘only game in town’ for evolution’s true believers is genetic copying mistakes or accidents, i.e. random mutations (which can then be ‘filtered’ by selection). However, the problem is that if mutations were capable of adding the information required, we should see hundreds of examples all around us, considering that there are many thousands of mutations happening continually. But whenever we study mutations, they invariably turn out to have lost or degraded the information. This is so even in those rare instances when the mutational defect gives a survival advantage, e.g. the loss of wings on beetles on windy islands.
We do observe them: they're simply small scale. However, there are many cases of information being added to the genome by mutation.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn13673-evolution-myths-mutations-can-only-destroy-information/
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB102.html
if we were divinely created, what kind of Creator do you imagine that would make it so we're inevitably losing information as the centuries go by? That seems doomed to failure.
Remember, evolutionary belief teaches that once upon a time, there were living things, but no lungs—lungs had not evolved yet, so there was no DNA information coding for lung manufacture. Somehow this program had to be written. New information had to arise that did not previously exist, anywhere.
They didn't evolve all at once. Small changes happened, maybe even for a completely different purpose: these added up, until a long, or feathers, were introduced.
Regarding the nature of God, we have good because he is good. He is the standard. I’m not sure what the problem is there.
No problem, if you admit you're simply defining this as an axiom: a fundamental statement that can't be proven. And if you're doing this, it can be compared to other axioms.
So you agree that the good in evolution is not right vs wrong but what enables us to survive, aka what’s best for myself. How did this “good” rise about then? How was it beneficial for the first being to put himself last and put someone else first? For example, what caused the first mother of something to nurture her young (and put her own needs behind)?
For the first being, it wasn't: not all animals act this way, though some observably do. Social creatures, however, rely on the influence of a society: and so a system of mutual trust and care would necessarily develop. Self-sacrifice might be part of this, or a side-effect of this caring: as for the first mother, it's clearly beneficial to protect your young. If you didn't, tehy'd be more likely to die, and those genes wouldn't be passed on: whereas the genes of the caring mother would far more likely survive.
Conscience begs the question, since there are murderers who seemingly don’t have a conscience. It depends on how depraved someone is to how far they are capable of committing acts that are evil. So whether you work on the weekend or are a serial killer depends on how numb you are to the consequences, or block out the conscience that I believe God gave us.
I'd say it's far more likely someone could blot out a conscience naturally evolved that one divinely mandated.
Even so, the typical trait of a predisposed killer (omitting crimes of passion) would be selfishness: focus on their own wants and needs rather than caring for others. A certain amount of 'selfishness' is a good thing, it's what means we eat rather than give all our food away, but evolution isn't perfect: of course certain drives can be misrepresented or badly followed. However, we can tell from an overall picture why what someone does is wrong.
Okay, one more try. This article http://creation.com/chimp-y-chromosome seems much easier to follow.
Has little to do with the key similarity, still only focuses on the great apes, admits there's error involved and yet treats the study as perfect... And all from a perspective that evolution is apparently some massive conspiracy.
Sorry for my late answer, busy day.
First, information. An article you gave me says "Rather than going into what defines 'information'..." but that's exactly the problem. I decided to pull some key elements from an article. You can view the entire article here:
http://creation.com/mutations-new-informationAdaptive immunity
I have a hard time calling something like adaptive immunity, which involves changes in the order of a certain set of genes to create novel antibodies, ‘mutation’. Adaptive immunity is often brought up by the evolutionist as an example of ‘new’ genes (traits) being produced by mutation. Here we have an example of a mechanism that takes DNA modules and scrambles those modules in complex ways in order to generate antibodies for antigens to which the organism has never been exposed. This is a quintessential example of intelligent design. The DNA changes in adaptive immunity occur only in a controlled manner among only a limited number of genes in a limited subset of cells that are only part of the immune system, and these changes are not heritable. Thus, the argument for evolution falls flat on its face.
Gene duplication
Gene duplication is often cited as a mechanism for evolutionary progress and as a means of generating ‘new’ information. Here, a gene is duplicated (through several possible means), turned off via mutation, mutated over time, turned on again through a different mutation, and, voilà!, a new function has arisen.
Invariably, the people who use this as an argument never tell us the rate of duplication necessary, nor how many duplicated but silenced genes we would expect to see in a given genome, nor the needed rate of turning on and off, nor the likelihood of a new function arising in the silenced gene, nor how this new function will be integrated into the already complex genome of the organism, nor the rate at which the silenced ‘junk’ DNA would be expected to be lost at random (genetic drift) or through natural selection. These numbers are not friendly to evolutionary theory, and mathematical studies that have attempted to study the issue have run into a wall of improbability, even when attempting to model simple changes. This is akin to the mathematical difficulties Michael Behe discusses in his book, The Edge of Evolution.34In fact, gene deletions35 and loss-of-function mutations for useful genes are surprisingly common.36 Why would anyone expect a deactivated gene to stick around for a million years or more while an unlikely new function develops?
But the situation with gene duplication is even more complicated than this. The effect of a gene often depends on gene copy number. If an organism appears with extra copies of a certain gene, it may not be able to control the expression of that gene and an imbalance will occur in its physiology, decreasing its fitness (e.g. trisomy causes abnormalities such as Down syndrome because of such gene dosage effects). Since copy number is a type of information, and since copy number variations are known to occur (even among people37), this is an example of a mutation that changes information. Notice I did not say ‘adds’ information, but ‘changes’. Word duplication is usually frowned upon as being unnecessary (ask any English teacher). Likewise, gene duplication is usually, though not always, bad. In the cases where it can occur without damaging the organism, one needs to ask if this is really an addition of information. Even better than that, is this the type of addition required by evolution? No, it is not.
Several creationists have written on this subject, including Lightner,38 Liu and Moran.39 Even if an example of a new function arising through gene duplication is discovered, the function of the new must necessarily be related to the function of the old, such as a new but similar catalysis end product of an enzyme. There is no reason to expect otherwise. New functions arising through duplication are not impossible, but they are vanishingly unlikely, and they become more unlikely with each degree of change required for the development of each new function.
The real issue
The development of new functions is the only thing important for evolution. We are not talking about small functional changes, but radical ones. Some organism had to learn how to convert sugars to energy. Another had to learn how to take sunlight and turn it into sugars. Another had to learn how to take light and turn it into an interpretable image in the brain. These are not simple things, but amazing processes that involve multiple steps, and functions that involve circular and/or ultra-complex pathways will be selected away before they have a chance to develop into a working system. For example, DNA with no function is ripe for deletion, and making proteins/enzymes that have no use until a complete pathway or nano-machine is available is a waste of precious cellular resources. Chicken-and-egg problems abound. What came first, the molecular machine called ATP synthase or the protein and RNA manufacturing machines that rely on ATP to produce the ATP synthase machine? The most basic processes upon which all life depends cannot be co-opted from pre-existing systems. For evolution to work, they have to come up from scratch, they have to be carefully balanced and regulated with respect to other processes, and they have to work before they will be kept.
Saying a gene can be copied and then used to prototype a new function is not what evolution requires, for this cannot account for radically new functionality. Thus, gene duplication cannot answer the most fundamental questions about evolutionary history. Likewise, none of the common modes of mutation (random letter changes, inversions, deletions, etc.) have the ability to do what evolution requires. Darwin pulled a bait and switch in his On the Origin of Species. He actually produced two separate theories: what I call his special and general theories of evolution, following Kerkut45. Darwin went on at length to show how species change. This was the Special Theory of Evolution and he was preceded by numerous others, including several creationists, with the same idea.
It took him a long time to get to the point, but he finally said,
“ … I can see no limit to the amount of change … which may be effected in the long course of time by nature’s power of selection.”46
This was his General Theory of Evolution, and this is where he failed, for he provided no real mechanism for the changes and was ignorant of the underlying mechanisms that would later be revealed. To use a modern analogy, this would be akin to saying that small, random changes in a complex computer program can create radical new software modules, without crashing the system.47 Thus, the ‘can mutations create new information’ argument is really about the bridge between the special and general modes of evolution. Yes, mutations can occur within living species (kinds), but, no, those mutations cannot be used to explain how those species (kinds) came into existence in the first place. We are talking about two completely separate processes.
Regarding your question on God's character, since we lose information: Disease and loss of information and decay are all products of what we term "the fall"--the first time man sinned. God didn't create the world as we see it today. But I've already touched on that in previous posts.
Regarding axioms, all philosophical systems start with axioms (presuppositions), or unprovable propositions accepted as true, and deduce theorems from them. Therefore Christians should not be faulted for having axioms. So the question for any axiomatic system is whether it is self-consistent and is consistent with the real world.
Regarding lungs, wings, and such: If lungs and hearts and wings were to evolve slowly (different topic, I get sidetracked), we would see these transitional organs in animals all over the fossil record. But what we see is fully developed lungs, hearts, and fully developed animals.
You say that evolutionary goodness rises from man's need to survive. This would mean that it all stems from selfish desires. But my conscience tells me that selfishness is wrong. Doesn't yours? Selfishness is the root of all evils: murder, lying, greed, etc. are all rooted in selfishness. Good, objective good, arises from just the opposite: selflessness. Selflessness is what causes us to be charitable, moms and dads, and heroes. It's what causes us to trust each other. A father penguin will practically starve himself while he sits on his chicks in sub-zero temperatures and ice storms. Why in the heck would he know that this helps to pass on his genes? If evolution were true, let me just tell you the obvious--we wouldn't be here. The natural instinct is to survive for MY benefit, not to pass on my genes. No lowly evolved being would have reason that he is aware of enough to sacrifice anything whatsoever. How would he or she even know they were passing on genes? They would've been like, "what is this thing leaching off of me?" And threw it away. Goodbye penguins, goodbye mammals. Goodbye, humans.
Creationists do not believe there's a conspiracy, but a lot of the information in the mass media is definitely biased, and the information in evolution is of course always interpreted from an evolutionary worldview and evolutionary presuppositions.