I'll give it a try. Not that I don't give credence to the gradient concept you mentioned in your ealier post to me. I do, but it still says nothing about how all of the new genes that the gradient works with came about. In addition, the idea that the first cell came up with a gradient that just happened to have the potential to unfold itself into all of Earth's biota goes way above my credulity threshold. I am sure you feel the same way. What is left, Theistic evolution of some kind?
But I digress. The 17 gene changes that result in major morphological changes had about 543 million years to occur. Plenty of time for 17 changes. Except those are not the only changes needed to make a brine shrimp into a fly. Numerous other changes had to occur at various other stages of that process each one producing a viable organism superior to everything else around at some niche.
If ANY of those 17 changes produce deadly or even very deliterious changes, the whole process is impossible regardless of the time allowed. And they must occur in conjuntion with many other changes.
I don't think it is accurate to imply that only 17 changes were needed. That is only for this one little area. Nor do I think it is safe to assume that shrimp-to- flys made the transition in only 17 jumps. Do you? I would guess hundreds of thousands of intermediate organisms. That means there must be a large number of 'islands or viablility' in those gene combinations between those 17 examples. Simply put, no one has demonstrated that to be the case.
No. As a matter of fact, from sequences obtained so far, the critical difference in this body plan change is contained in only 10 amino acids. So, one piece of the puzzle has been demonstrated. Are you saying that other pieces of the puzzle could never be demonstrated similarly? Or that all the changes for each puzzle piece had to happen simultaneously?