No. What?
Wait, I’m confused, sorry. Are you saying that common descent can’t explain how genes are gained and lost?
I’m really unable to determine what could possibly have been unclear. When I say “Common descent doesn’t explain gene gain”, what other interpretation is possible?
Okay. I’m still a little confused though, I thought you agreed with common descent. Where are you saying that new genes come from then?
Of course I do. Again, how could that possibly have been unclear?
Where are you saying they come from? Suppose I have a gene that neither of my parents have. Does common descent explain how I got that gene? No, presumably some kind of mutation explains how I got that gene. Now it’s true that the sequence of that new gene was mostly inherited from one or both parents, whether the relevant mutation is a gene duplication, recruitment of a non-coding sequence through a point mutation, or whatever. (Then again, horizontal transfer might explain some new genes too; even less common descent there, if so.) But the mutations, not common descent, would explain the new gene. This, incidentally, is Bill’s central failure of understanding. I hope you don’t share his problem.
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Mutations, drift, and selection explains gene gain and loss.
Common descent is agnostic towards the mechanisms by which the differences emerge. It is the pattern of them that allows one to construct a nested hierarchy.
Technically genes could be gained and lost by intelligent design(or, if you want, wished into existence), but it is the fact that the pattern in their presence and absence allows us to infer a consistent nested hierarchy that is evidence for common descent.
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Oh, duh, of course. Sorry, @John_Harshman, I don’t know what I was thinking.
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With you, temporary. With Bill, permanent.
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I’m impressed. I’ve built a few computers, but I’ve never melted down the sand!
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@ Bill Cole
I’m following the interaction.
There’s interaction?
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Maybe this piece will help some to grasp that common descent doesn’t explain gene gain or loss.
As a general rule, nothing in Evolution News helps anyone understand anything. The opposite, in fact. It was certainly irrelevant to my point.
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Earlier, I claimed that we have not seen a new functional protein-coding gene evolve in multicellular eukaryotes because the time scale would be too long. I was wrong. We have actually observed, or at least inferred, the evolution of a new gene (by gene duplication and neofunctionalization) in the Antarctic eelpout, which codes for a functional antifreeze protein (Deng et al. 2010).
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How so?
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I asserted that there two many differences to infer a designer would make the changes using reproduction. They “could not evolve” comment is a burden shift. This statement comes when someone lacks evidence for their own opinion. It is sciences burden to show they likely evolved.
This is a false claim. Very different features are evidence of independent origin. This is a common inference in human design where no one would claim an airplane is a modified car. The “no evidence” claim is a fallacious statement that evolutionists use and you have appeared to pick up.
Yet your claims turn out to be based on shallow analysis of all the issues. How did you go from YEC to full blown evolutionists believer so fast. It appears you have a difficult time taking a middle position.
Common descent is a limited explanation we agree. The claim that separate creation (common design) fails to explain a nested hierarchy is false as Winston showed. Repeating this does not make ti true.
You still don’t understand the most basic claims in that paper.
Ewert himself said that design should produce numerous and obvious violations of a nested hierarchy.
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Your reading what you want to see:
If the true explanation for life’s pattern of reuse is the dependency graph, why has it been interpreted as a nested hierarchy? According to the dependency graph hypothesis, the tree is simply a subset of the true de- pendency graph. Attempts to determine the correct tree of life have simply been uncovering the tree which best approximates the entire dependency graph. This works because some modules contribute much more similar- ity to species which depend on them than others. Life resembles a nested hierarchy because a nested hierarchi- cal structure is similar enough to a dependency graph structure to approximate it.
Life does not fit a perfect nested hierarchy that common descent would predict. It has genes that do not follow the tree and so far no one has come up for an explanation of this based on reproduction. Gene gain and loss needs to be invoked which is beyond common descent as John has stated.
And, you know what? The scary thing is that Bill might actually believe that is true, despite the many explanations for this he has received over the years.
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