New Atheism and creationism

Discussion on YT’s wall:

Mother Jones Future President Ben Carson Wrote 6 Books. We Read Them So You Don't Have To.  27 January 2015 “I find it as hard to accept the claims of evolution as it is to think that a hurricane blowing through a junkyard could somehow assemble a fully equipped and flight-ready 747.”

A New Atheist remarked on “the mind-boggling ability of religion to turn otherwise intelligent people into idiots is so potent that apparently even being a trained neurosurgeon is no guarantee that one can understand the basic mechanics of natural selection.”

WH: This intelligence failure phenomenon is unfortunately not unique to religion. Consider Nobel Chemistry laureate Linus Pauling and his megadose vitamin C controversy.

The discussion turned to the infamous 1998 episode where Richard Dawkins was duped into a video interview with creationist organisation Answers in Genesis, which was deceitfully edited to give the impression that Dawkins was unable to give an example of a mutation that increased information in the genome. A creationist said that “it really is Dawkins’ responsibility to vet his interviews.”

WH: As much as I disagree with Richard Dawkins, he cannot be held responsible for deceitful editing when he consents to an interview in good faith. To do so is the equivalent of blaming fraud on the victim for “failing to do some basic research.” Rather, it is the responsibility of allegedly Christian editors to act in a manner that is compatible with Christian values.

The creationist referred to biologist RW Carter’s argument that evolution can only increase “mathematical information” (in the Shannon entropy sense) but not “biological information.”

Journal of Creation Can mutations create new information?  August 2011 Evolution requires the existence of a process for the invention of new information from scratch. Yet, in a genome operating in at least four dimensions and packed with meta-information, potential changes are strongly proscribed. Can mutations produce new information? Yes, depending on what you mean by ‘new’ and ‘information’. Can they account for the evolution of all life on Earth? No!

Ultimately, examples of evolutionary “information” increase do exist, so whether Dawkins could name them is irrelevant. Examples can be expected to arise via basic mutation modalities.

In his article, Carter's own examples of aerobic citrate metabolising E. coli and nylonase Flavobacterium easily constitute increased “biological information” under his chosen definition of “an encoded, symbolically represented message conveying expected action.” Carter's attempt to redefine these examples as "degraded information" consists of grossly false claims and puerile semantics, and bears false witness against the truth.