Cameron and Comfort Hit New Low with Rank Dishonesty

I was reading Comfort/Cameron's reaction to the ass-whipping they took on the upcoming ABC special for their "proof" of God's existence, and happened to notice the mention of a website in the press release:

http://www.intelligentdesignversusevolution.com/

Curious, I looked it up...Jesus Christ on a pony, are these kooks not only pathetic, but lying for Jesus!

On their front page, they feature a video of a creationist interviewing Dawkins, and I know that video. And that's why I call them dishonest/liars.

They dug up the canard about Dawkins' inability to answer a question about genomic information increases via evolution -- a subject they've been thoroughly responded to on, but stammer on mindlessly about. What's sad in this case is the deception that was involved in both shooting the interview and in the selective editing used to piece it together. Basically, it's a creationist hit job on Dawkins.

Usually, people like Comfort/Cameron are just stupid, (i.e. argumentum ad bananum) but here they're playing to rank dishonesty and exposing their complete lack of integrity.

I have compiled a very useful list of papers (continually revised), covering abiogenesis, the evolution of genetic information, the origin of the genetic code, and human evolution. I will list some of those papers below.

For more on the evolution of information in the genome:

1. Natural selection as the process of accumulating genetic information in adaptive evolution, M. Kimura (1961)
2. Rate of Information Acquisition by a Species subjected to Natural Selection, D.J.C. MacKay
3. Evolution of biological information, T.D. Schneider
4. The fitness value of information, C.T. Bergstrom and M. Lachmann
5. Review of W. Dembski’s No Free Lunch, J. Shallit
6. The Evolution and Understanding of Hierarchical Complexity in Biology from an Algebraic Perspective, C.L. Nehaniv and J.L. Rhodes
7. On the Increase in Complexity in Evolution, P.T. Saunders and M.W. Ho (1976)
8. On the Increase in Complexity in Evolution II: The Relativity of Complexity and the Principle of Minimum Increase, P.T. Saunders and M.W. Ho (1981)

In addition to these papers, I wanted to highlight six other recent reviews that give a great overview of the present scientific thinking towards the origin of the genetic code:

1. "Selection, history and chemistry: the three faces of the genetic code.", Trends in Biochemical Sciences, Volume 24, Issue 6, 1 June 1999, Pages 241-247 (full-text .pdf)
   
2. "Genetic code: Lucky chance or fundamental law of nature?", Physics of Life Reviews, Volume 1, Issue 3, Dec 2004, Pages 202-229 (full-text .pdf) [low-quality pub, but expansive overview of the subject]
   
3. "Stepwise Evolution of Nonliving to Living Chemical Systems.", Origins of Life and Evolution of the Biosphere, Volume 34, Issue 4, Aug 2004, Pages 371–389 (full-text .pdf)
4. "The Origin of Cellular Life.", Bioessays, Volume 22, Issue 12, Dec 2004, Pages 1160-1170 (full-text .pdf)
5. "The Origin of the Genetic Code: Theories and Their Relationships, A Review.", Biosystems, Volume 80, Issue 2, May 2005, Pages 175-184 (full-text .pdf)
6. "The Origin and Evolution of the Genetic Code: Statistical and Experimental Investigations.", Robin D. Knight, Ph.D. Dissertation, June 2001.
   

And three more about evolution and complexity:

1. Understanding the recent evolution of the human genome: insights from human-chimpanzee genome comparisons, Human Mutation, 28(2):99-130, Oct 2006, Download PDF
2. The origin of new genes: Glimpses from the young and old, Nature Reviews Genetics, 4(11): 865-875 Nov 2003, Download PDF
3. Evolution of biological complexity, PNAS, 97(9):4463-4468, April 2000, Download PDF

There are answers. Do the creationists know that they exist? Mostly not. Would they understand them if they did? Mostly not. How much knowledge is required before creationists admit that we have sound scientific answers to all of their objections? There will never be enough. Ever.

The sad thing is that they think that their non-answers and ignorance (not knowing how things happen) equals evidence that scientists/science cannot provide answers or knowledge. IOW, they use the classic argument from incredulity/ignorance. If they don't know or understand something, then it means god did it. Longest-running theme in creationism.
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