Proving common descent (Introduction)

by dhw, Tuesday, November 13, 2012, 19:50 (4394 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: The reason epigenetics doesn't fit is that epigenetics, in the examples we see,is a response to a threat or danger, or to an environmental change. The effects on the animal body may be small but never as dramatic as inventing new forms of animals. The Cambrian is NOT epigenetic, is a super-genetic!-We do not know how new forms of animals came into being. We can only speculate, 
and that is what I am doing. The examples of epigenetics that we have seen may only be small because the environmental changes are not major. If it can be proved that such small "effects" can be permanent, maybe large ones could also have been permanent. The explanations we have been offered for these massive Cambrian innovations have so far been:
1) random mutations
2) God deliberately creating each new organ and organism separately
3) Organisms responding to new environmental conditions by inventing new forms-You have consistently argued in favour of God pre-programming evolution, so let me see if I can pin you down. Since you believe in evolution, you believe that every living form is descended from earlier living forms (so exit (2)). If you reject the idea that the cell communities that make up every organism exploited new conditions by inventing new forms, exactly which part of these organisms do you think God pre-programmed to create the innovations that would eventually turn them into humans ... via those essential but now dead diddywocks, dumblebucks and dinosaurs? (You say elsewhere "the species that came and went were preparation for the next step.")