Innovation, Speciation: strange DNA finding (Evolution)

by David Turell , Wednesday, November 28, 2018, 18:47 (2185 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: You can’t pass a programme along to something that doesn’t exist, and you can’t dabble with something that doesn’t exist. Either you believe in common descent or you believe in separate creation.

My view of common descent hasn't changed. God developed one stage at a time from what He had created previously. The earliest forms (bacteria) may have contained a progressive mechanism He supervised until He decided to add further instructions. My view of common descent is like Darwin's notation of a tree. but each stage is originated by God. Is it separate creation? Yes, but not a completely new form, it is a modification of the past form, so the changes are not completely discontinuous.

dhw: So Darwin is not totally dead, since you accept his theory of common descent as opposed to separate creation. But you believe your God guided the process.

Dead as a door nail. God made each step as a modification of the previous forms.

dhw: So your God specially designed 1000 life forms (just a number), then killed 99% of them off because there was no room for the one he really wanted, and although the ten he left alive still weren’t what he really wanted, they somehow eventually led to the one he really wanted, H. sapiens, whose brain and body he then specially designed. ...The story becomes curiouser and curiouser.

I'm glad I aroused your curiosity. Darwin's 'common descent' is 'descent with modification'. In my view God is the modifier at each new stage and therefore we see descent with modification.

DAVID: It is possible God experimented on the way. Religions claim God is totally omniscient but I have no proof of that, so experimentation is a consideration.

dhw: Now we’re talking. We must allow for the very human possibility that either your God doesn’t know what he wants, or knows what he wants but doesn’t know how to get it. (He is not omniscient.) There is no proof either that your God is in total control, or WANTS to be in total control, or created all the varieties of life as steppingstones to humans, or has no characteristics in common with the creature he created in his own image. It is all conjecture. But if experimentation is a possible consideration, so too is the unproven hypothesis that he created life because as first cause he was all alone and wanted something to occupy his sourceless, eternal, immaterial mind. If he can be ignorant, he can also be in need of something to do in the course of eternity.

Now in your very imaginative mind you have created a mindless, purposeless lonely God wandering around wondering what to do, and probably wondering what caused Him to be there at all and certainly why He existed. Yet you can't explain the design in life you recognize.

I suggest you look at this site which exposes some of the real complexity of living tissue. Just glance at it. Absorbing it all would take weeks. You need to open your mind to the real complexity that we simply name without immersing ourselves in during our discussion:

https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/mechanosensing-and-mechanotransduction-h...

"So, what have we learned from this long discussion?
The transition to metazoa implies a whole new world of functional complexity, a specific general plan that allows the implementation of tissues, organs, body plans.
Part of it is, of course, cell differentiation: each cell must be guided to its final state, its final specific phenotype, starting from one common genome/epigenome. This was the subject of my previous OP about transcription regulation.
But another important part of it is cell location, in time and space. The ordered guidance of each body cell to the right place and to the right functional connections is the foundation for the implementation of the general plan, which is made of specialized tissues that make specialized organs and consistent global organisms.
Cells exist in a complex 3D environment created, maintained and dynamically restructured by the cells themselves: the ECM.
The interaction between cells and the ECM is essential to many cell functions, starting with cell shape, and including cell migration in development and for other functional needs.
The interaction between cells and the ECM is not only chemical, but essentially mechanic.
The Integrins and the Focal Adhesions are an extremely dynamic system that links the ECM to the cytoskeleton, in particular to actin.
Cell migration is realized by the integration of an extremely rich network of signals, both mechanical and biochemical. Cell-cell interactions have also a leading role.
How that integration is achieved by each specific cell is still not understood.
Indeed, a lot of the essential aspects of all these issues are still poorly understood.
The axonal growth cone is another example of “migration” of a cell structure, which involves billions of specific pathways. The whole structure of the central nervous system depends on those processes.
Whatever the mechanisms that we still don’t understand, it is rather clear that coordinated cell migration and axon growth require not only the amazing structures and integration abilities in each individual cell, but also the cooperation of many different actors: the migrating cell, the ECM, guiding proteins and ligands, intermediate cells, the final target, and probably many other components."