Thermos aquaticus
Well-Known Member
the empirical sort, direct repeatable testing, measurement, predictive ability even
What empirical observation, if made, would falsify your position?
And so if these idiosyncrasies are arbitrary, do nothing other than to make certain errors more or less likely for no particular reason- then we would expect to see them distributed in common ancestors- i.e. through the action of mere common descent as opposed to being actively present as the result of a specific intended function yes?
Transitions do not outnumber transversions for no particular reason. From the other thread:
First, let's look at the nucleotides themselves:
The four DNA nucleotides (G, C, A, and T) are pictured above, and you will notice that G and A are chemically similar (two rings) while C and T are chemically similar (single ring). Due to these chemical similarities it is easier for a G to be accidently changed out for an A when DNA is being copied, and the same for C and T. Again, this has to do with the basic chemical properties of the nucleotides. A mutation that switches out similar nucleotides is called a transition while a mutation that switches out dissimilar nucleotides is called a transversion.
That is a very particular reason. The chemical structure of the nucleotides makes some mutations more likely than others due to their similarities. A different mechanism applies to CpG mutations. Enzymes in the cell preferentially methylate the C of a CpG. The process of methylation makes the C very susceptible to mutation, and that mutation turns a C into a T. This is why CpG mutations occur at the highest rate, because of known natural processes in the cell.
We already discussed the 'inverted retina'- long assumed to be a similar inherited arbitrary design glitch, before we understood it's elegant and sophisticated purpose. And yes, we see the exact same thing here:
Then why don't squid have an inverted retina? Why does the direction of the retina follow the predicted evolutionary phylogenies if these species did not evolve from a common ancestor?
But the larger point is not simply that this is a brilliantly elegant and efficient design, it's that when you try to happen upon such systems by trial and error, you run out of nanoseconds the universe has existed, elementary particles, googolplexes, to attempt to quantify the number of random tries required to happen upon it by sheer fluke.
That's easily proven false. Each person is born with 50 to 100 mutations, so let's go with the lower number of 50. There are 3 billion bases in the haploid human genome. Therefore, it will take, on average, just 60 million births to mutate every base in the human genome. There are 3 possible changes at each base, so it will take 180 million births for there to be a specific mutation at every base in the human genome present in at least one human being. Do you think it will take eons for 180 million human births to occur?
Regarding design through random rolls of the die.. it' a nice simple, intuitive assumption to work from, but when the die keeps rolling six, at some point you have to acknowledge that it's loaded, whether we like the implications of that or not
You haven't shown that this is the case. Where is the evidence?