So how do justify that skepticism and demonstrate the evolution of hairless apes that could observe the cosmos was pre-specified?
I’ll save you the trouble: You can’t. It’s just a faith position the requires force-fitting the evidence to fit your belief system. No different from what YEC’s do. Oh, but you’re one of those, now, too. Right?
Please show me the specific design for the planthopper’s anatomy you had before the planthopper was “constructed.” Showing diagrams of human produced mechanical gears will not suffice. I want the actual planthopper pre-manufacture specifications, not an after the fact description.
The evidence offered by @glipsnort showing an expected mutational pattern is the most compelling but does not model how the mutations end up with new innovative features. Both sides are making their own judgement against the evidence. Most people in the US are skeptical of the random accident hypothesis (guided by selection and/or drift) as it is a poor explanation of new innovative features like language and creative thought.
Gil’s hypothesis that this transition took specific mutations fits the data pretty well if you include alternative splicing, gene expression and protein differences into account. It is not clear at all how these changes could become fixed in human populations by drift or selection.
The model that shows how these mutations could become fixed in the population is yet to be offered.
The Douglas Adams brilliant puddle analogy still easily defeats the “I am here so I must be special!” claims.
“This is rather as if you imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, ‘This is an interesting world I find myself in — an interesting hole I find myself in — fits me rather neatly, doesn’t it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!’ This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, frantically hanging on to the notion that everything’s going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise. I think this may be something we need to be on the watch out for.”
LOL! Good old Bill and his No Evolution! fantasies. Still claiming no one has ever modeled evolutionary processes despite having been shown the models countless times. Amnesia is still a critical necessity for Creationists it seems.
That’s not “Gil’s hypothesis”. It’s just bleeding obvious and trivial.
Similarly: A poker hand of the Ace of Hearts, the 3 of Spades, the 9 of Clubs, the 6 of Diamonds and the 5 of Clubs requires those 5 specific cards.
Without any one of those cards, it would be a different hand.
Whoopee.
I don’t need the likes of you and Gil to explain something so simple, thanks.
The vast majority of them don’t even have to be beneficial. The rate of fixation of neutral mutations is enough to account for pretty much all of them.
Well so anyway, there’s no waiting time problem for mutations. The number of mutations that separate humans from our closest relative isn’t a problem.
How remarkable you subjectively think the result of those mutations are, is not a relevant factor in considering the rate of evolution. I could find some obscure reason to consider the Bonobo in particular to be remarkable, and then wonder how of all things, this thing I happen to like so much was the one that evolved.
I don’t for a moment believe that you have read any of the works you are ‘quoting’, or even know what those works are. I doubt you have bothered to check their accuracy in any way, or have the faintest idea whether they are genuine.
Unfortunately for you, at least one of them is (unsurprisingly) a misquote. Since you have cited the authors directly, rather than citing the secondary source you actually got these ‘quotes from’, you and only you are responsible for the misquote.
You have misrepresented your sources. Your entire post, and all subsequent ones, can be dismissed on these grounds.
It is @Giltil’s assumptions that we are talking about. He is assuming humans had to evolve. They didn’t. Until there is evidence that humans had to evolve then any calculations for the probability of humans evolving is meaningless.
Wait. Aren’t you the one assuming humans had to evolve? 
Christians don’t.
No. I don’t assume that humans had to evolve.
So what’s your other explanation for how we got here?
The mutations cause a change in amino acid sequence. The change in amino acid sequence can change how the protein folds or interacts with the environment. Mutations can also occur outside of the coding sequence, resulting in changes to when and how strongly a gene is expressed. This can include transcription factor binding or miRNA binding.
Are you not aware of how mutations cause changes in function?
My explanation is that we evolved. We are the end product of a historically contingent process. It is the same sort of explanation for why a specific cloud in the sky came to be, and not some other cloud.
Showing change in function tells us nothing about how brains emerged to be able to process abstract thought or how complex written language emerged.
You need evidence for that assertion.
From what I can see, the reason humans have a greater mental capacity than other apes is because of the mutations that separate us from those other apes. It is our DNA that builds our brains, and the differences between the brains of different species is due to differences in DNA sequence. Mutations absolutely do explain it.
I think there is some confusion here. I’m pretty sure that @T_aquaticus accepts that evolution is the explanation for why humans exist.
When he says humans did not have to evolve, he means that it was not necessary or unavoidable that the process of evolution ended up producing human beings.
That is to say, if we were to rewind the tape of the history of life on earth back to the last universal common ancestor, there is almost no likelihood that the same life forms that have populated the earth would arise again, including humans.
@Giltil and @colewd also seem to understand that an unguided evolutionary process would not be predicted to have given rise to humans.
However, for religious reasons, they think that there is a necessity that human beings exist in the universe. So their solution to the problem they face is to imagine that God intervened in the evolutionary process to ensure that humans were one if its results.
The problem they face, however, only arises from their religious preconceptions. It does not exist for anyone who does not hold to those preconceptions.
This is not a problem just for evolution-denying creationists, I should add. Some theistic evolutionists (or evolutionary creationists, as they are also called) have the same concern: How can a chance driven process lead to a predetermined outcome, assuming humans were a predetermined outcome of evolution? Their solutions to the problem do not entail denying the science of evolution, however.
I disagree. It tells us the how such brains arose. It does not tell us how changes in brain structure allowed those abilities to emerge. Some think these abilities do not arise from the brain at all. I don’t see much good evidence for that claim, however.
In any event, that does not seem to be what you are denying. You seem to think mutations to the genes determining brain structure cannot affect brain structure. That’s a rather foolish position, I must say.
Tons have been written on these subjects. Can you list some sources that you have read and why you disagree with them?