Evolution: a different view with loss of DNA segments (Introduction)

by dhw, Monday, January 07, 2019, 11:42 (1934 days ago) @ David Turell

I am combining this thread with the one on "Genome complexity" to avoid unnecessary repetition.

DAVID: The 3.8 byo program allows the organisms to modify their DNA only for adaptations to immediate needs which provide minor changes within species. That is how I view Shapiro. Elsewhere I have provided evidence for the initial program completely providing everything (all info) from the beginning.

dhw: This makes no sense. Presumably your first sentence refers to Shapiro’s hypothesis of “natural genetic engineering” (and my hypothesis of cellular intelligence as the designer of innovations), and not to your 3.8 byo programme.

DAVID: The preprogramming allows for animals to make minor adaptations within the same species by adjusting the DNA in genes as necessary for changing circumstances. […] You and Shapiro are not describing a speciation method, only a minor adaptation ability.

Again trying to clarify: The 3.8 byo programme is your hypothesis, not mine. Your alternative is dabbling. So now are you telling us that your God preprogrammed nothing but minor adaptations 3.8 billion years ago, and dabbled every single major innovation? In my alternative hypothesis (which I take to be similar to Shapiro’s), the cells autonomously design their own innovations. And I keep agreeing that we don’t have the evidence that it can design major innovations, which is why it is only a hypothesis like your own equally unproven speculations.

DAVID: Of course environment plays a huge role as when mammals entered water permanently, but design for survival is required. Note design is primary.

dhw: I don’t know what you mean by “primary”. Are you referring to your theory that your God changed legs to fins before sending pre-whales into the water, all for the sake of complexity - not survival - although fins are no more complex than legs?

DAVID: Of course, primary always means first, and in this case design is first.

So let’s be clear what this means: your God preprogrammed or dabbled pre-whale legs to become fins, monarch butterflies to fly thousands of miles north/south, east/west, cuttlefish to camouflage themselves, 50,000 spiders to design different webs etc. etc. - all BEFORE these life forms and millions of others were exposed to the conditions which either necessitated or allowed the changes. He therefore knew about (or even organized) every single environmental change, local and global, before it happened, and did all this so that the different life forms could become more complex and eat each other for 3.5+ billion years before he designed the only thing he wanted to design: you and me.

dhw: […] small individual groups in different environments would explain why different structures evolved in order to cope with different environments. This is why I have proposed that a particular group of apes in a particular location may have decided (and most likely needed) to descend from the trees, whereas elsewhere their brothers had no problem. [I should have said brothers and sisters.]

DAVID: You totally miss the point of small groups and large changes in form. To repeat, a small group of hominins evolved very advanced changes in the human form and brain.

dhw: How have I missed the point? That IS the point of my last example!

DAVID: Yes you have. A tiny number of existent hominins made enormous changes to advance the human form and brain in short geologic time. Where did the large number of mutations come from your small group of apes on the ground? At one point it is thought there were only 10,000 pre-sapiens living![...]

See my bold above for the small group. Did you want me to say "tiny" instead of small? Why do you need a large group to make large mutations? You ask where the mutations came from? Once more, see above for your own hypothesis (God’s preprogramming or dabbling before they left the trees) and for mine and Sheldrake’s (natural genetic engineering), with the cells autonomously changing the body in order to adjust to new conditions.

DAVID: Not millions of sticklebacks with new mutations and some changes. The issue is still chance vs. design.

dhw: No it isn’t. You claimed that the sticklebacks supported Behe’s theory that loss of DNA drives evolution. I have explained that in some cases evolution will require the jettisoning of previously evolved structures that are no longer suited to the new environment.

DAVID: Same point as Behe. Jettisoning advances evolution.

There is no advance if sticklebacks lose a fin, or pre-baleen whales lose their teeth! They are simply different forms of stickleback/whale using a different method of survival.

DAVID: I never agreed to autonomous design, and you know it. Design with guidelines, in existing DNA.

One of the problems in our exchanges is that sometimes you say one thing and then later say the opposite. That is why we need these constant clarifications. Under “Genome complexity”, 3 January at 19.03:

dhw: The question is…whether your God’s “information/instructions used by the cell” means a specific, 3.8 billion-year-old programme for every single change in the history of evolution […] or a mechanism which enables the cell to change itself autonomously…

DAVID: The only issue here is I believe God gave the cells that mechanism.

What mechanism were you referring to?