Miscellany (General)

by David Turell , Friday, January 22, 2021, 19:33 (1190 days ago) @ dhw

Magic embryology
You don’t need to keep repeating your belief or to tell us about other species. Just tell us why you think that your God must have popped in to operate on some pre-whales’ legs before they entered the water, and that it’s not possible that these animals found they had a better chance of survival in the water, and in time their bodies adapted to the new environment – a process which included legs being transformed into flippers.

We have no proof that stepwise adaptions result in speciation, so it remains a nice theory. The massive evidence of gaps is strongly against it.

Snakes repel their own venom.
dhw: I repeat: do you believe that organisms autonomously develop antidotes in response to the threat posed by external poisons, or do you believe your God either preprogrammed the antidotes or stepped in to do a dabble? I’ll come onto internal threats when I get your answer.

DAVID: Only simultaneous design will work. If only personal poison is present and kills, how is there survival to develop the antidote? I'm not discussing external poison!!! You are simply avoiding my proposition. I assume God at work here and probably helping with external poisoning.

dhw: In answer to your question, maybe the internal poison doesn’t always kill.

Why dodge? The discussion is all about lethal poisons.

Darwin scientists find useless evolution

DAVID: It is the Darwinists who claim the molecules are useless and survived by habit!!!! My answer above suffices.

You asked: “What happened to perfect natural selection which always makes the right choices?” I have told you what happened to natural selection. According to the article, the molecules are harmless, in which case there was no necessity to discard them.

So natural selection allowed useless evolution like junk DNA? Chance at work?

dhw: I have every right to ask you why you think your God designed molecules that make terrible mistakes. Your answer (that I am saying “God doesn’t know what he is doing”) is totally out of order.

The high-speed reactions with errors have been discussed ad nauseum.

Macrophages
QUOTE: "The researchers note that the diverse responses to opposing cues may allow macrophages to more readily adapt to changing environments, as well as to quickly transition from attack mode to focusing on tissue repair.”

DAVID: Very clever design to have these cells multitask.

dhw: Yes indeed. The ability of these cells to multitask in order to meet the needs imposed or opportunities offered by changing environments may well be the key to speciation.

This in only clever immune system design. Stop clutching at straws.

De novo or orphan genes
QUOTES: The authors describe bursts of innovation: upon the origin of placental mammals, 357 novel genes; upon the origin of the metazoan, 1,189 novel genes; upon the origin of the land plants, 1,167 novel genes; and upon the origin of the flowering plants, 2,525 novel genes.
"[..] This leads the authors to infer massive gene losses and frequent horizontal gene transfer in the history of life.

DAVID: Gould's gaps and punctuation stares at you in your face. Behe laughs about the losses. This question is not 'wide open' as this discontinuity is perfect evidence of God the designer at work stepping in.

dhw: The article is a complete vindication of my description of the process, under Evolution: a different view with loss of traits; not Behe. On 18 September 2020, 11.09, I wrote: “The process of evolution entails the acquisition of new genes (or new functions for old genes) and loss of unwanted genes, which will be weeded out by natural selection.” However, I should have included horizontal gene transfer. I see absolutely no reason why you should regard the discontinuity as evidence of God stepping in. I would say it is due to the fact that environmental change occurs in bursts, and speciation is a consequence of cell communities responding to new requirements and/or opportunities provided by those changes, whether local or global. If existing structures cannot cope with or exploit these changes, they will die – hence the extinction of 99% of past species. But the source of the ability to change (adapt or innovate) remains an open question, and your God is a possible answer to that question.

The gaps between species are strong evidence for God coding DNA to create increasing complexity, a hallmark of our evolution. I still propose God speciating. Behe found advances by deletions without DNA additions. Of course new complexity requires bursts of innovation. No Darwin here.