Re: Stuart Newman/ Jeff Farias Show: Beyond Darwin

Thursday, 18 December 2008, 12:10 pm
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Re: Stuart Newman/ Jeff Farias Show: Beyond Darwin

From Dave Finn

It is easy to demonstrate that Darwinism is a mathematical impossibility if evolution includes any significant genetic changes as large as or larger than the addition of a gene to the genome of a species. There is consequently a vast amount of Darwinist propaganda pushing the multiple small change model.

A simple example arises with "punctuated equilibrium". In the 650 million or so years since the Cambrian explosion most advanced species have gained about 20,000 genes. (It is the extremely small range in number of genes gained that makes Darwinism statistically impossible).

Genes rarely act as single genes, most function as part of a genetic mechanism where several interacting genes (or the chemicals they catalyse) interact to transform chemicals, energy or information into more usable forms. As it takes several genes to make a genetic mechanism there is a correspondingly smaller number of genetic mechanisms gained over the 650 million years - a few thousand.

Only a small proportion of genetic mechanisms affect those aspects of an organism, the surface, structures and shape, that are preserved in fossils - say a few hundred. If an organism, during 650 million years of evolution, gains a few hundred genetic mechanisms that affect its fossil form then one might reasonably expect to see a few hundred transitions where the mechanism came together and started functioning.

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This is precisely what is found - sudden jumps with about million year spacing. Medical experience of genetic mechanisms is that they do not function until all component are present and if a missing component is provided through gene therapy the mechanism immediately activates.

The process is stop/go, not gradual. The simplest explanation of the jumps in the fossil record is that they merely represent the points in time where individual genetic mechanisms "came together", by whatever means you assume. You will never find this explanation in any book on evolution because the components of a genetic mechanism coming together and starting to function as a genetic mechanism is a large rare change.

If large rare changes were normally to arise by chance the rate at which they arose would depend on the population size (more tickets to the genetic lottery, more winning combinations) and this effect is totally absent from the distribution of numbers of genetic mechanisms. What is required is not a new synthesis of Darwinism, it is a completely different explanation of the origin of large rare genetic changes. This is not difficult - all the necessary imformation is already known.

ENDS

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