Genome complexity: new review of epigenetics studies (Introduction)

by dhw, Thursday, May 11, 2017, 14:11 (2535 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Resistance to toxins is epigenetic using alternative pathways that are available. Camouflage in butterflies is structural as probably is change in fur color. Require planning.

Resistance to toxins has to be a physical as opposed to a behavioural process. I suggest that all of these processes come as a RESPONSE to the environment. Planning requires knowledge of the future. Please tell us about adaptations that have been observed BEFORE the relevant environmental changes took place.

DAVID: Migration is not evolutionary phenotypic change, which is my point.
dhw: But you don’t confine your God’s planning to phenotypes – you insist that only he could have planned the monarch’s migration and designed the weaverbird’s nest, all for the sake of humans. It is the whole package put together that is so illogical. Or are you now backtracking on lifestyles and natural wonders?
DAVID: You are correct, migration requires planning. I was referring to body type changes in speciation. Your cell committees are incapable of future planning to accomplish species change.

I am not suggesting that my cell committees plan for future changes in the environment. I am suggesting that they respond to changes as they happen. In your scenario, speciation, lifestyles and natural wonders all require God’s preprogramming or dabbling in order to keep life going for the sake of humans. Once again: are you now backtracking on your insistence that God also designed all the lifestyles and natural wonders for the same purpose?

dhw: […] you therefore seem to be suggesting that your God gave the fish animal legs and lungs, then put lots of food onto dry land and told the fish to leave the water. And presumably he designed the monarch’s metamorphoses and navigational apparatus before changing the climate and forcing the butterfly to emigrate (in order to keep life going before he designed the only thing he wanted to design – homo sapiens).
DAVID: Perfectly acceptable scenario.

Just to make it clear: we now have evolution as a process in which God creates new species, lifestyles and natural wonders, and then creates the conditions in which they are able to live, as opposed to new environments triggering the structural changes.

DAVID: I have made the point that environmental changes never pushed the drive to humans. apes are still apes. Environment is only one of many factors that drive evolution. Darwin used that argument, but his entire theory is weak, as we know.

We have both made the point over and over again that environmental changes never pushed the drive to multicellularity as a whole, since bacteria are still with us. That is why over and over again I have suggested that all advances beyond bacteria, including humans, can be attributed to the drive for survival and/or improvement. Darwin argued that environmental factors, random mutations, competition for survival and natural selection drove evolution. We both reject random mutations, I suggest cellular intelligence (perhaps God-given) instead, and would add cooperation to competition. I don’t know how any of this supports your thesis that God created new species, lifestyles etc. before creating the conditions that demanded or allowed them.