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

by David Turell , Friday, March 22, 2019, 21:37 (1862 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: By “itty bitty” I mean one bit at a time […] why did he take millions of years fiddling with the big toe, the pelvis, different sizes of brain, different types of hominin, different types of human? [...]

dhw: I trust you now agree that your God’s design of H. sapiens proceeded itty-bitty by my definition.

DAVID: Your definition has no basis in fact. Compare Lucy, habilis, and erectus with sapiens. […]

dhw: I have done exactly that. If your God’s one purpose was to design H. sapiens, it would seem that he did the designing one bit at a time, as described above, which is what I mean by “itty bitty”.

That is not my definition. Itty-bitty is Darwin's tiny adaptations until something big happens. Our hominin gaps are huge

dhw: We were talking about the cause of speciation, and in order to discredit the theory of cellular intelligence as the designer you pointed out that bacteria are still bacteria. I pointed out that if you believe in common descent, SOME organisms change while others remain the same. How does that prove they are not intelligent? And if your God exists, I have no doubt that he would have created them with a purpose. Same question: How does that prove they are not intelligent?

DAVID: Same issue: we see them respond intelligently. No proof of why: just 50/50 possibility.

dhw: Already agreed. But you tried somehow to use the non-evolution of bacteria as evidence that they were not intelligent.

We don't know if bacteria are intelligent. It is a 50/50 possibility from our observations.

DAVID: You haven’t answered the major point, which is bacteria were preserved, and therefore they did not evolve into multicellularity by any mechanism they might have had. As God speciated, they purposely were kept for future functions and God produced something entirely new while using some of what bacteria had: DNA.

dhw: I have now answered it twice, but I’ll try again. Evolution does not mean that EVERY existing organism turns into another organism. SOME bacteria would have joined forces to create multicellularity, and others would have remained the same. SOME ape ancestors would have turned into pre-humans, but others would have remained the same. As bacteria have always been able to survive changes to their environment, they did not need to “evolve” into anything but bacteria. But SOME of them decided (“intelligence” theory) or were divinely preprogrammed/dabbled (your theory), or simply happened (chance theory) to form ever evolving communities.

You are right in that 99% of species die out. And since we do not know how things speciate, you have listed possibilities.