Logic and evolution: Darwin theory is not scientific (Introduction)

by dhw, Monday, April 15, 2019, 11:39 (2048 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: The dispute concerns the implications of there being junk or no junk in the genome. If there is no junk, those Darwinians who claim that the presence of junk supports their case against design will be proved wrong. But if they are too stupid to realize that no junk supports the Darwinian case for natural selection as the preserver of what is useful, then more fool them.

DAVID: You are totally confused. Your platitudes about Darwin and natural selection are correct at the level of living and surviving. But that is not at the functioning genome level of DNA with new mutations and deletions. They change the organisms living abilities which is then subject to the trials of natural selection. See today's entry on extinction and recovery.

dhw: The confusion is yours. Mutations and deletions within the genome have everything to do with living and surviving and with the adaptations and innovations that drive evolution! The claim that no junk means that “Darwin is dead” (the subject of this discussion) is nonsense, because the principle of natural selection applies at all levels of life: if something is useful, it will survive. Calling this a platitude does not mean it is wrong.

DAVID: Still confused. Natural selection is passive as a receiver of what DNA offers it represented as the attributes of a living organism.

I have already agreed: “We agree that natural selection creates nothing, but works on whatever exists.”

DAVID: Surviving or extinct, the DNA is part of a living bush of life in which the patterns of DNA remain changed only as the bush complexifies….

What does “remain changed” mean? The bush complexifies because DNA changes. If those mutations are successful, the new structure will survive. Natural selection.

DAVID: 80% functional as ENCODE reports. Graur, the author of your 'nonsense' firmly believes 80-90% of DNA is 'junk'. So 'junk' becomes a huge issue in whether Darwin has any validity.

Darwin knew nothing about DNA. So what did Darwin write that has now been invalidated? What is the issue? Some evolutionists believe that if there is junk DNA, it supports the case for randomness and destroys the case for design. And so the less junk there is, the weaker their argument becomes. I have no idea how much is junk and how much is not. My point is that even if it turns out that all of DNA is useful, these evolutionists can argue that it is explained by Darwinian natural selection, whereby what is useful survives. And you still haven’t come up with an answer.

Re Extinction and recovery:
QUOTE: They found that total complexity recovered before the number of species -- a finding that suggests that a certain level of ecological complexity is needed before diversification can take off.
In other words, mass extinctions wipe out a storehouse of evolutionary innovations from eons past. The speed limit is related to the time it takes to build up a new inventory of traits that can produce new species at a rate comparable to before the extinction event.

dhw: The fact that it takes time for different life forms to emerge after an extinction has nothing to do with the implications of junk/no junk. Please note the vital link between the environment (ecological complexity) and diversification: cells/cell communities respond to the needs and opportunities that arise from environmental change. No hint that your God preprogrammes or dabbles all the mutations before the environment changes.

DAVID: The implication I see is the requirement to build new DNA instructions on the surviving old DNA and time involved. No implication natural selection deleted useless DNA.

It is blindingly obvious that if common descent is true, any innovation involves new DNA instructions, and it makes no difference to our discussion whether the process takes ten years or ten million years (though you have ignored the vital point about the role of environmental conditions). I have no idea whether DNA is deleted or just restructured. The article talks of storehouses being wiped out, but the new organisms must still have formed their innovations out of the DNA that had survived. The two questions remain (a) how much existing DNA is junk or is useful, and (b) what are the implications if there is no junk (see above).