[asa] Re: All powerful mutations, fasifiable?

Evolutionists also do not come to variation and selection with a
predetermined answer, such suggestions are just unnecessary.
Note that noone is stating that mutations are all powerful, on the
contrary, mutations are constrained and that is what we find when we
look at mutations in the genome.
Your suggestions of related species is indeed an interesting one, and
needless to say, scientists have already taken this route to
understand what the differences and similarities tell us. A harder
path is one which involves natural selection because its probabilities
are much harder to determine. Although, recently researchers have
managed to unravel pathways for an ancient enzyme.

However, ID by itself has nothing to do with your belief in God. ID is
a concept based on the elimination of known regularity and chance
pathways to infer 'design'.

Once you accept the fact that mutations are not all powerful, one can
generate, as science has done, hypotheses. For instance, the
reconstruction of the phylogeny of life has shown how science can
reconstruct a history independent of other data, and consistent with
other data. If mutations were 'all powerful' there was no need to find
evidence of ancestral genomes, anything would work. The reality is
that evolution works with what is available, a duplicated gene for
instance which can either become deactivated again, or acquire a new
function.

Mutations can indeed do a lot but not everything, which makes them viable

Since your 'calculations' do not include selection and in fact expect
relatively large genes to arise out of nowhere they miss the pathways
that science envisions. Surely you do not think that science had not
realized that a de novo out of nowhere 200 amino-acid gene was
improbable?

How would one eliminate chance mutations? What do you mean by this?
How do you eliminate chance mutations as opposed to directed
mutations? Non-Random mutations? Or how do you eliminate chance and
regularity as a pathway? Is that not the unenviable task ID has forced
upon itself?

On 9/24/07, rpaulmason@juno.com <rpaulmason@juno.com> wrote:
> ID would be as interested in studying mutations and natural selection as an evolutionist only they wouldn't be coming at it with a predetermined answer. We can study the secondary causes and may find that mutation is sufficient for some things - but at the present level of understanding it doesn't seem to be sufficient for everything.
>
> I would love to compare genomes of closely related species to see what changed then we can better calculate the odds of those changes with mutation rates and generation times. I would love to see if an RNA world could turn into a DNA world. In fact ID has motivated me to learn more about the origin of life - the chemistry, paleontology and probabilities. I can live with all life evolving by chance with God setting it up - but it doesn't look like it to me with what is known about the prebiotic worlds.
>
> Instead of an intelligence that can do anything you rely on all powerful mutations and chance. You think they can do anything and can't be eliminated with observation and calculations. What would it take for you to eliminate chance mutations?? How could that theory be falsified?
>
> You brush off the math too quickly - that is what keeps me from believing in mutations alone - not the Bible. God commanded teh EARTH to produce living creatures - it doesn't say how the EARTH did that. Mutations can do a lot - but not everything. What exactly is wrong with my math - I told you what was wrong with starting with replicating units of information and applying natural selection to it - it's getting new replicating units (genes) that are the problem. Dawkins and others skip that part and that's the key.
>
>

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Received on Mon Sep 24 21:34:16 2007