Re: The El Tejon situation [was Judge Jones sided] was misspelled

Of course there's debate about (b). That's just the small matter of going
back a million, ten million, hundred million or billion years back and
explaining what specific factor caused a particular change. We can't tell
that for contemporary changes. For example, Collins ran down the gene
responsible for cystic fibrosis. We now know that it controls chloride
transfer. When the gene is inherited, we understand the mechanism fairly
well. But we do not understand why there is a change in any one of
several residues producing a mutant gene that, if inherited, will result
in CF. We know that there is a mechanism to correct such errors in
transcription. Why does it sometimes fail?

In contrast, we now have enough genomes sequenced to observe continuity,
not just in the genes or exons, but in the introns, once referred to as
junk. Virtually identical genes control the placement of visual sensors
in /Drosophila/, cephalopods and /Homo/, even though compound eyes and
retinas are obviously different, and molluscan and mammalian retinas have
different structures. We can tell approximately when a change occurred on
one branch and not on another For example, there is a specific insert in
/Pan/ and /Homo/, but not in /Gorilla/ or other primates, but all three
genera normally have two visual pigment genes on their X-chromosomes. (a)
is an obviously rational explanation for these and a host of other
observations.

Of course there is also a mindset: if you can't explain everything, I
won't accept your explanation for anything. But I state it more bluntly
than the usual application.
Dave

On Thu, 12 Jan 2006 21:19:13 -0500 David Opderbeck <dopderbeck@gmail.com>
writes:
However, none of these issues brings into question common descent, and
that is the core issue....Common descent itself is not the topic of any
serious debate.

Keith (and others) -- I'm trying to get a better handle on what people
mean when they use various terms in discussions like this. When you say
"common descent," are you referring to (a) what happens (organisms change
over time and later organisms are related to earlier ones); or (b) how it
happens; or (c) both. My impression has been that there is general
agreement in the scientific community on (a), but that there continues to
be substantial debate about (b). I'm not so sure that (a) is the "core
issue" in arguments about design, though it can be an issue; it seems to
me the core issue is (b). Or am I way off base? Thanks.
Received on Thu Jan 12 23:10:16 2006