Condorman wrote:Actually, I was talking about the problem of the creation of new information in an existing code when acted on by purposeless natural forces.
When working with analogies, one must remember to occasionally revert back to the actual topic of discussion. We are talking about gene duplications resulting from reproduction.
Condorman wrote:Maybe it doesn't break down at all. Why do you say that it does? I've read the link but I find nothing particularly useful in it. The article states, without evidence, that "The leaf-eating douc langur has a 'duplicated' gene that started as an extra copy of a gene for a particular enzyme but mutated into a gene for another enzyme with a different purpose " and then goes on to say that "in douc langurs, the duplicate ribonuclease gene evolved into a gene for a digestive enzyme." It then goes on to describe how the scientists made mutations in the ribonuclease enzyme with "each [of the nine] with one of the nine amino acid changes that separate the duplicate from the original. Every change reduced the enzyme's ability to degrade double-stranded RNA--the enzyme's original job." I thought we were talking about duplicated genes not duplicated proteins.
Here we see the limits of a cake recipe as an analogy to reproduction and mutation--carry it too far and it breaks down. Did you read the monkey link I gave you (gene duplication in action)?
More research is needed to show not only how the amino acid changes reduced the ribonuclease's old function, but also how they helped it reach its new function.
This is what some would describe as "poke and hope" language.
We know that point A leads to point D, but we are still looking for point B and point C.
Because a cake doesn't bake itself, and recipes usually won't spontaneously replicate. Maybe it would be a better analogy to envision me with the original recipe for chocolate cake and I fax it to you. Except the paper jams for a quick second and a line gets repeated. You do understand that these changes occur between generations, right?
So, we start with a similarity between two genes and it is proclaimed that one evolved from the other without giving any evidence (after all, we all know that evolution is true).
No evidence? None whatsoever? They reproduced the path. Change the gene, you change the protein. Can you go from "cold" to "heat" in 5 steps. You can only change 1 letter at a time and each intermediate must form an English word. Essentially, that's what this protein did. The team figured out how it could have happened through natural processes. Crediting a designer with the change is hardly warranted.
The statistical analysis you waved away concerned whether this type of change is driven by selection forces or random drift. That you were unable to pick up on this demonstrates the rigor of your examination.
it's the genes that carry the code!
More precisely, the genes ARE the code.
The fossil record clearly demonstrates that the inhabitants of this planet changed and diversified through time. That much is not in dispute, and is commonly known as the fact of evolution. The Theory of Evolution proposes the mechanisms by which these changes took place. This theory is undergoing constant revision and tweaking as new evidence filters in and gets incorporated, but there has yet to be a verifed discovery which collapses the whole structure, and none yet which require the invocation of the supernatural.