Gradualism in Evolution not supported by genome studies (Agnosticism)

by David Turell , Saturday, October 17, 2020, 16:54 (1497 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: I am not disputing the fact that there is gene loss! I am disputing the argument that gene loss CAUSES speciation, and this whole discussion began by my disputing the claim that evolutionary advances “always result from loss of genes”. All you have come up with is the fact that genes get lost during adaptation, and initially you disputed the concept of new genes. The fact that speciation must involve reorganization of genes is so obvious that it is barely worth stating.

DAVID: We can stop here. Basically we do not know how speciation works. Just theories, not Darwin's

dhw: You are happy to demolish Darwin’s theory of random mutations, but having championed Behe’s theory as if it were some kind of breakthrough, you would now prefer not to discuss it because I’ve questioned its premises. Yes, we can stop here. We can stop every discussion on every subject, because we don’t “know” the origin of life, if God exists, what are his nature, purposes, methods if he does exist, how to resolve the theodicy problem, how consciousness arose and functions, whether or not we have free will, whether cells are intelligent or not…etc. and how speciation happened. But I would like to think that both of us are constantly learning from these discussions, and if nothing else they are keeping our old brains ticking!

I'm with you. your thoughts about areas of discussion are right on. All I meant was the current subject is rather beaten to death for the moment, so let's find other aspects with whic h to challenge each other.