Pointy eggs and whales (Evolution)

by dhw, Saturday, September 01, 2018, 09:57 (2054 days ago) @ Balance_Maintained

DHW: Does this mean that when your God created the root type, he put in a kind of computer programme for round AND pointy eggs (plus every other possible variation within that original root type…?.

TONY: Yes, this is precisely the idea behind my hypothesis.

DHW: […] Have scientists actually discovered these computer programmes, which in David’s theory produced the root types as well as all their variations, and have they observed these programmes at work?

TONY: Yes. DNA is the code, and epigenetic changes are the various outputs that change depending on environmental inputs and are inheritable without rewriting the underlying program.

Again I’m trying to understand. Your God specially created root types, and installed in their DNA was a computer programme for every single variant, with a solution to every single problem, except their last. Ditto my favourites, bacteria, though they haven’t yet had to face their last problem. I understand your explanation of how epigenetic changes work, but how do you know that this computer programme exists, and that the cells/cell communities of which organisms are made don’t work out each solution for themselves?

David: The possibility of finding such codes or guidelines might be possible when we fully understand all the layer of control in the genome, and we have basically just scratched the surface. We have finally gotten rid of the idea that the genome was simply a protein coding system.

Yes, atheistic materialists use the same argument when challenged with all the missing bits of the picture: eventually we hope to find them when we fully understand this, that and the other. Let me join in the fun: the possibility of finding that cells/cell communities are intelligent enough to work out their own solutions might be possible when we fully understand etc.

QUOTE: “Scientists are now gaining a better understanding of what existed before the Cambrian Explosion as a result of new fossil discoveries. […] Some of the new fossil discoveries, in fact, appear to be more primitive precursors of the later Cambrian body plans. The discovery of such precursors shows that the Cambrian organisms did not appear from thin air.” (My bold)

TONY: But do they have precursors or are the new forms that did not exist prior to the Cambrian?

DHW: The quote says they did have “more primitive precursors”.

TONY: Within the cambrian, but it doesn't state if there were pre-cambrian precursors.

See my bold.

DAVID: Twisted meaning of 'precursors'. If you study the Cambrians and compare the Ediacarans, and I have, there is no similarity except they both were living forms. Precursor here simply means predecessor. The gap has not changed since Darwin was puzzled over it.

I quoted a website that disagrees with you, but I’m in no position to argue. If the gaps are as large as ever, that still doesn’t prove that organisms can spring from nowhere. It simply tells us that there are unexplained gaps. To adapt your formula relating to the missing computer programme (codes and guidelines): The possibility of filling the gaps might be possible when we have fully understood how evolution works and have fully investigated every scrap of possible fossil-bearing material. We have basically just scratched the surface.

DHW: I myself find “developing new resistances” more convincing than preprogramming. Maybe that’s as far as we can go.

DAVID: Note I said there was a variation in resistance among individuals, as individuals vary in other ways. Our immune system allows us to develop immunity as we live. I assume bacteria have the same ability, although much less complex than our system.

Maybe there is a variation in intelligence among individuals, as individuals vary in other ways.

TONY: By that same logic, a recent article on plant pollination and imbreeding resistance shows that plants are immune all pollinating toxins except their own. How do they have that information?

Nobody knows, so take your choice between the various theories you listed – or just keep an open mind!