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To: stremba
This destroys Behe's argument, since there's no positive evidence that IC systems found in organisms didn't evolve. The burden is on those challenging the accepted theory to show that their ideas are better, not on those supporting the accepted theory. So far, ID'ers haven't met the challenge.

And the positive evidence that macro-evolution has occured can be found where? Aren't those really the 'gaps' in the ToE? Isn't it interesting that the 'gaps' in the ToE constitute the basic claims of evolution?

The truth of evolution is dependent on the 'gaps' being filled. If they are not filled, there is no positive evidence for evolution; only speculation.

626 posted on 10/06/2005 9:04:00 PM PDT by connectthedots
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To: connectthedots

There are gaps in the TOE, but there are gaps in ALL scientific theories. Treating evolution as somehow being weaker than any other theory is fundamentally dishonest. As far as positive evidence for evolution goes, try reading either on some of the past threads or elsewhere about retroviral insertions. That's a particularly convincing piece of evidence that different species share a common ancestor.

Basically, the whole point is that we know that viruses reproduce by inserting their genome into the DNA of a given cell in an organism. Occasionally, the cell so infected will be a sex cell, so this insertion will be passed on to the offspring of that organism. Since organisms typically have very large genomes, it is very unlikely that an identical insertion at an identical genomic location will occur in two different organisms as independent insertion events. It is therefore reasonable to conclude that two organisms who have an identical viral insertion at the same genomic location share a common ancestor which was the original source of the viral insertion.

If we then use evolution to predict what we might see, we would predict that if different species of creatures share a common ancestor, we might very well see different species of organisms share the same viral insertion at the same location in their genome. We can even go further in the type of predictions we can make. We can predict, for example, that if gorillas, chimpanzees and humans all share a common ancestor, then there should be identical insertions found at the same location in the genome of all three of these species.

We can further predict that if the hypothesized evolutionary relationship between these species is correct, then there should be a specific pattern to the insertions. We hypothesize that a species ancestral to gorillas, chimps and humans branched into two species, one which led to gorillas and another which later branched into chimps and humans. Therefore, it should be possible to find insertions that occur in chimps and humans, but not in gorillas. It also should be possible to find insertions that occur in any of these three species alone, and not in the others. That is, only the insertion patterns of GCH, CH, G, C, H can occur. Note that there can be no insertions found in gorillas and chimps, but not humans or found in gorillas and humans but not in chimps. When tested against the genomes of gorillas, chimps and humans, these predictions are found to be 100% correct.

Beyond the utterly useless statement that "that's the way the designer wanted it," ID cannot provide an explanation for this state of affairs. No other idea can provide an explanation for these observations either. Please note that this is only one line of evidence in favor of evolution. There are certain patterns in the fossil record, certain patterns in the morphology of species, and certain patterns in the DNA of organisms that make no sense and have no other explanation if evolution is not true.


637 posted on 10/07/2005 7:34:05 AM PDT by stremba
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