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

by David Turell , Tuesday, January 08, 2019, 22:10 (2145 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: 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.

we differ completely in that I am sure design is required for each advanced species.

dhw: 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.

A good summary of my view, if this all refers to speciation.

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![...]

dhw: 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?

The point is simple: if mutations cause speciation and have to occur by chance, a small of group of hominins with a new generation every 18-20 years is extremely unlikely to have produced the body form and brain changes in the short geological time we know happened.

DAVID: Same point as Behe. Jettisoning advances evolution.

dhw: 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.

Those are not tiny modifications by any means but major designed changes. Of course Behe is on point.

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.

dhw: What mechanism were you referring to?

Same old answer. I don't change. Cells have (per Shapiro) the ability to make small modifications to their activities by editing their DNA, an ability given by God's design. They cannot create their own speciation by design.