This is a red herring. You are claiming changing fruit-fly genes in a
lab was evolution. I said it was an argument for special creation.
GM>Experiments are carefully planned so that they can isolate certain
>variables. The scientist says,"If I can remove only this one gene, what are
>the effects?" That is why the planning and intelligence are required. The
>scientist needs to be sure that the only thing he does to those flies is to
>knockout the one gene and not others. If you can prove that the only change
>you made in the animals genome is the removal of one gene, then you can
>figure out what the gene does by looking at the result. Special creation is
>not even involved in the propositional logic that went into the experiment.
> Nowhere did the scientist say, "If I can remove one gene from this fly, I
>can prove that God created this stupid fly. How does the removal of one gene
>prove God created the fly? I fail to see how this follows. Thus your
>assumption that this careful planning is nothing more than an acceptance of
>an argument which has been told to christians so often that lots of people
>believe it now. It is, as the philosphers say, a non sequitur.
I don't disagree with the experimental method. I disagree with the
conclusion
that it necessarily evidence for evolution. It is at least equally
evidence
for creation.
>Stephen wrote:
SJ>The question is, did the "small genetic change" you have referred
to,
>actually happen in nature, and did it happen by purely naturalistic
>processes? When? Where? How?<
>
GM>I believe that these changes did occur in nature. Can I prove it
like a
>mathematical theorem? No. But then I can't prove that George Washington
>existened if I must hold to that standard.
I said nothing about proving it like a "mathematical theorem". I aksed
"did it happen by purely naturalistic processes?" and if so "how?"
GM>Did it happen naturalistically? I honestly can't answer that. God
has not
>told us those types of details. I can not know that it happened by your
>definition of naturalism any more than you can be sure that it didn't. God
>has not told us in his Scripture that he personally added these segments of
>DNA onto the genome of the onychophorans. Thus you should be a little less
>definitive that God could not have used a set of laws He designed to
>accomplish the purposes He wanted.
I do not say that "God could not have used a set of laws". It is *you*
who appear claim that He *only* did.
GM>God might have personally added these DNA segments. I can not be
>positive that he didn't. But I do not know how to tell the difference
>between that and Him using the natural laws He instituted. In either case,
>GOD IS INVOLVED IN THE FORMATION OF THE ANIMALS AND IT CAN NOT >POSSIBLY BE CALLED NATURALISTIC! Anything God does is by definition >THEISTIC! The question is what did he do?
Agreed. So your experiment could be support for PC. Why do you then
not
also claim that?
>Stephen wrote:
SJ>None of this is new. Gould discusses it in "Hen's Teeth and
Horse's
>Toes", under the heading "Helpful Monsters". It is interesting that
>he does not claim this is necessarily how evolution occurred:<<
>He then quotes Gould on page 194.
>
>Au contraire. Gould does suggest that this is how evolution occurred. But it
>is not in quite the fashion that Goldschmidt envisioned. On page 195 Gould
>notes that homeotic genese prove that very little of the genetic material is
>really involved in laying out the body plan. Gould then notes that the
>homeotic genes are hierarchical. and on page 196 he wrote:
>
>"If embryology is a hierarchical system with surprizingly few master switches
>at high levels, then we might draw an evolutionary message after all...If >classical Darwinian gradualism is now under attack in evolutionary circles, the
>hierarchical structure of genetic programs forms a powerful argument for the
>critics."Stephen J. Gould, Helpful Monsters," _Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes_,
>1984, Penguin,p196
>
GM>To me the greatest problem Christianity has in the area of origin
science is
>that we are always behind the curve. We never seem to be able to anticipate
>what the Naturalists are about to spring on us. All our arguments about
>gradualism and how mutations affecting evolution occur are about to be
>overthrown (if theyhaven't already been) by new discoveries. Creationists
>still argue from the "beanbag view" of genetics.
I don't know. It seems to me that science is coming around more and
more
to an almost "creationist" position.
GM>The new view of evolution is seen in the following. Scott Gilbert
wrote:
>"..evolution is the result of
>hereditary changes affecting development. This is the case whether the
>mutation is one that changes the reptilian embryo into a bird or one that
>changes the color of Drosophila eyes." Scott F. Gilbert, Developmental
>Biologuy (Sunderland: Sinauer Assoc. Inc., 1991), p. 841
>
GM>Mutations which affect the early part of development can have a
much larger
>effect. But what impresses me is that these experiments are revealing that
>the way a reptile was transformed into a bird is being slowing revealed. A
>hereditable change in the way the tibia and fibia develop produced the bird's
>leg. While to my knowledge the exact genetic switches have not been found
>the following illustrates the pathway.
This is not at least equally evidence for PC.
>Stephen Gould wrote:
>
>"In 1959, the French embryologist Armand Hampe reported some experiments on
>the development of leg bones in chick embryos....."Stephen J. Gould, "Hen's >Teeth and Horses Toes", "Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes", 1984, Penguin, p184
>
>(His three experiments did not prove special creation)
They did not "prove" evolution either!
GM>I will now quote Gilbert about this experiment,
>"Correlated progression has also been shown experimentally. Repeating
>earlier experiments of Hampe (1959), Gerd Muller (1989) inserted barriers of
>gold foil into the prechondrogenic hindlimb buds of a 3.5 day chick >embryo..."Scott F. Gilbert, Developmental Biology (Sunderland: Sinauer Assoc. >Inc., 1991), p. 846
GM>If these changes have nothing to do with evolution, why are the
changes only
>in the direction of reptiles? Why do none of these alterations give a
>characteristic mammalian pattern?
Its interesting how you change the argument around! :-) I did not say
it had
"nothing to do with evolution".
GM>One final item. The fact that you can very simply transform a bird
leg into
>a reptile leg with a simple alteration of the flow of material, reveals the
>reason why all those transitions in the fossil record are never going to be
>found. Nature, biological nature, does not work in the fashion which would
>produce thousands and millions of intermediate forms....
Nor would creation.
God bless.
Stephen
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