Re: It's the Bible or evolution

Preston:

Actually we went over this in some detail a few weeks ago. Miller's
pseudogene argument has several problems. Let me just focus on the main one:
Special pleading.

This comes from the fact that biology is full of examples of identical yet
independent mutations. The term "mutational hotspot" is conveniently used,
even if we don't quite understand the causal factors. In any case,
independent mutations are a fact. Indeed, they are even observed in, of all
things, pseudogenes (urate oxidase, GULO, etc). Evolutionists explain these
as due to mutational hotspots. But if repeated, identical mutations can be
explained as due to hotspots when common descent is ruled out, then this
explanation is also possible even when CD is not ruled out. Miller's
argument that these are compelling evidence commits the fallacy of special
pleading.

--Cornelius

>
>
>
> Ted:
>>>For evolution, he gave several such
>>>examples, esp the recent discovery of pseudogenes in identical locations
>>>for
>>>humans and some other primates--a "fact" that favors the "theory" of
>>>evolution
>>
>>Cornelius: It does *not* favor evolution.
>>
>>over a theory of a common design plan, since the genes have no
>>>known functions and thus a designer would have no reason to give them to
>>>all
>>>of these organisms.
>>>
>>>ted
>
> Cornelius,
>
> What is your basis for saying this? The countless examples of transposed
> elements in exactly the same position (and same type, orientation, etc.)
> in different mammalian genomes seems to me one of the strongest sets of
> evidence for common descent. I gathered earlier that you reject all this
> evidence, but I don't know what your alternative explanation for the
> phenomenon is. I have not been following things closely, being up to my
> eyebrows in grant writing recently.
>
> Preston G.
Received on Thu Oct 6 02:08:06 2005