Genome complexity: squid epigenetics (Introduction)

by David Turell , Monday, February 16, 2015, 21:20 (3356 days ago) @ dhw


> dhw: Of course the squid is still the squid, because this is adaptation and not innovation. The whole point of the discussion concerning an inventive mechanism is that NOBODY knows how innovations have come about, and so we are looking for an explanation. Since we do know that there is a mechanism which enables organisms to change themselves, it is not unreasonable to hypothesize that the same mechanism under certain conditions might also be able to invent. If you accept common descent, you have to accept that innovations must have taken place within individual organisms and been passed on to subsequent generations. And so we go back to the alternatives: 1) they did it themselves; 2) God dabbled or preprogrammed every single innovation; 3) all the innovations were beneficial strokes of luck.-My choices are luck cannot do it, so 1 % 2 are the only ones left for me. Then I look at 1 and revert to the idea that much of the progress of evolution is preprogrammed. It is easiest to stop at 'God did it'.