[Sentis]

"The scrambling should prevent the re-emergence of the trait. The odds that those scrambled genes have repeatedly unscrambled themselves, and then got turned on at just the right time, must be astronomical. "

Astronomical in terms of insects is a misnomer. Genes express themselves in a variety of ways and I will not go into it as it takes volumes to explain why genes do what they do and your free to read about that on your own. I'll give a very simple example. Lets say the information for wings is available in 20 % of the population of stick bugs and is spread evenly among those creatures. This information is scrambled in these bugs but as the bugs breed and re-breed among themselves the percentage remains the same but a number of insects slowly increase the amount of genetic information for wings. So after one generation there is a group with 21% of the information needed to develop wings and a population with 19% after 80 generations there will then be a group with 100% of the information and a group with none. Thus those with 100% would be likely to express wings as a result and any offspring would also have that information.

This is a very simple example but it shows how astronomical isn't the word that can be used especially in insect population where generations are measured in months or a year rather than long periods of time.

[Ahban]

Numbers! May God bless you sir, for it is a rare evolutionist who is willing to consider them.

I'd like to move furhter with this. Can you help me follow up on this mathematical model?

First you assume that 20% of the population has the information for wings. Do you mean that 20% of the population have the wing gene intact, or that any given individual has 20% of the whole infoset needed for wings? If the latter, does another member of this group have a different 20%?