Genome complexity: what genes do and don't do (Introduction)

by David Turell , Sunday, January 20, 2019, 18:51 (2133 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: I'm sorry if I am confusing you, but you want theoretical exactitudes in an area of research in which we have a partial glimpse into the complexity.

No I don’t. I want a coherent account of your beliefs, as explained above.

DAVID: DNA is simply a passive code used by the entirety of the various layers of the controls in the genome. I believe many of those layers existed in first life or life would not have happened….

dhw: So DNA never did contain a “complete set of instructions for cells to respond to.” Thank you. What do you mean by “layers of controls in the genome”? How does this differ from the cell communities having the ability to reconstruct their DNA?

See my entry today in this string about metamorphosis and speciation. DNA is a basic code but obviously does not contain the way life evolves. Other layers cause slicing and dicing to make genes do differing things, or transform gene expression in other ways to create different outcomes. We see it happening but still have not uncovered a primary control mechanism, just as we don't know how genes exert their outcomes.

DAVID: Possibilities: 1)That first life contained everything needed then and perhaps for all of evolution to happen either automatically…

dhw: Why automatically? Your “perhaps” means the first cells would have contained a complete set of instructions for every single innovation in the history of evolution (not to mention the lifestyles and natural wonders which you insist could only have been programmed or dabbled). But those instructions were not in the DNA, which is merely a passive code. So what uses the passive code in this first possibility?

I have said in the new entry and at other times we don't really know those layers, which could simply be God acting, or are acting in ways we will find following information God implanted. There have to be other ways of control, and I've used the term 'layers' to describe them. Like a corporate diagram of a business.

DAVID …or as next:
2) God used the initial genome's layers to create each big step/gap in
evolution

dhw: Which means every big step required an individual dabble. There was never any preprogramming for evolution, but your God separately designed each innovation.

DAVID: 3) God only had to step in and make an occasional minor course correction

dhw: If your God only had to dabble minor changes, every big step was the result of instructions contained in the original cells – but not in the DNA. In that case, somewhere within the cell is a controller, but it’s not God, because God-control = dabbling, not automatic preprogramming. Implications to be seen below.

DAVID: 4) God deleted from the beginning genome and new forms appeared.

dhw: Which means the original genome contained complete instructions for all innovations – but not in the DNA – and God dabbled to remove them. One wonders why he bothered to put them all there in the first place, if he had to remove a million or so programmes every time he wanted to dabble just one. A nightmare for Ockham!

Back to Behe and elimination.

DAVID: Since I believe God ran the process of evolution, it is therefore logical to create the above possibilities, from which I cannot see a defining discovery to tell us which are most possible. I think I have answered your questions.

dhw: You have glossed over the most important question of all, as above. What do you mean by “layers of control”? In your first and third possibilities, the major innovations are preprogrammed, but God plays no part in the implementation (it’s automatic) and yet something controls the use of the passive code. In the passage you bolded as representing your exact thoughts, that “something” was the organism itself, which means the cell communities of which every organism (bar single-celled) is made. And yet, although your exact thoughts are that DNA is a passive data base which is used by the organism, nowhere in your list of alternatives do we find the possibility that your God might have designed a control system that enabled the organism (cell community) itself to use the passive code!

I've always admitted that an 'inventive mechanism' is possible. but you won't accept it as under God's developmental guidelines. Without those guiding principals evolution could proceed helter-skelter.