Pointy eggs and whales (Evolution)

by David Turell , Friday, August 31, 2018, 19:12 (2066 days ago) @ dhw

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), and when the murre settled on a slope, the computer programme automatically switched to pointy, thereby reshaping the cloaca? Just making sure I’ve understood, so please correct any misunderstandings.

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

dhw: Thank you. It’s a similar idea to David’s, except that he believes in common descent, and so his billions of computer programmes were installed in the very first cells, whereas presumably yours were “only” installed in the new root types, as and when he created them. 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?

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

DHW: I can’t solve the Cambrian mystery any more than you can, but here is a website with answers you will reject and evolutionists will accept, both of you because of “confirmation bias”. Nobody knows the truth.[/i]

Does the Cambrian Explosion pose a challenge to evolution?
https://biologos.org/.../scientific-evidence/cambrian-explosion

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.”

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”.

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

DHW: Most of the “cognitive” tests offer choice of some kind. Why are bacteria killed by antibiotics until they find modes of resistance? Are the “prescribed chemical reactions” that Billy will go glug and die, while Bobby finds a solution? There has to be choice. My view of evolution is that changes are not planned in advance but are triggered by environmental needs and/or opportunities.

TONY: I've been curious about this, but honestly do not have enough information to answer. Are they developing new resistances, or is there some underlying existing something that causes Billy to be vulnerable while Bobby is not. For example, we know that some people are genetically predisposed to diabetes because their genetics make their cells insulin resistant. Could what we be seeing be a small preexisting variation in organisms that make them already resistant, and by killing off all the Billy's all that is left is Bobby's, or are they adding new information? Or is there some function in their genes that changes its output based on some input that results in their resistance? I don't know.

DAVID: I commented on this in the past. There is a variation in resistance so some will survive, there is horizontal gene transfer, and there is also gene modification. All have been shown.

dhw: I find it difficult to believe that your God preprogrammed the first bacteria with resistance to every single problem that would challenge them throughout the history of life on Earth past, present and future, although some of them would not inherit the right programme for resisting some of the challenges and would either die or would require a horizontal gene transfer. Tony’s list of possibilities is pretty comprehensive, and of course we don’t know. I myself find “developing new resistances” more convincing than preprogramming. Maybe that’s as far as we can go.

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.