It’s also a lie. Bill knows that gene duplication occurs in living organisms. He has been referenced experiments where organisms evolved multiple hundreds of gene duplications within a few thousand generations.
So he’s lying. He is stating something he knows is false. Bearing false witness.
I don’t think one can. But I have never seen him attempt doing that. He only ever tries to distract from his lies with, well, distractions and more lies. He never says he was wrong and concedes a point. He never show signs of having been corrected. He will always return to the lie to matter what. He will be here shortly to insist there’s no mechanism for evolving new genes. He will be lying when he says it again.
People like Bill are into an extreme form of make-believe. In his religion God speaks and things become so. Bill believes he has that power too. If he just says there is no mechanism for evolving new genes with enough conviction, it will become true because, you know, with God all things are possible.
I agree with the make-believe, but I see this as a product more of tribalism than actual religion, although it can be argued that the current state of much of Christianity in the US (and some other countries) is simply right-wing, authoritarian political tribalism with little religious content.
People like @colewd are operating from a fundamentally different epistemic basis than people like you and I are. They are starting from the basis that The Truth is something that has been revealed to them by God. And if the evolution of new genes thru divergence of duplicated genes is not compatible with that Truth, then it simply must be false. It doesn’t matter how much evidence exists to show it is true. Evidence doesn’t matter.
The problems for them arise because they insist that scientific evidence must also be compatible with the Truth that has been revealed to them. And when the scientific evidence actually contradicts The Truth, as it so often does, they have to engage in the sort of remarkable and unseemly mental gymnastics that we routinely observe from the creationists in this forum.
Folks like you and I don’t have any such problems, OTOH, because we think revelation is just bunk.
Hi Faizal
Evolution of proteins is not at all understood other then speculative mechanisms such as gene duplication. This has nothing to do with religion it is about the limit of what science can currently explain.
I do agree with you that if you are a theist you are more likely to accept there is an alternative explanation to evolutionary theory. If you do not believe God exists multiple origin events is essentially a non starter. I see this as a powerful reason to accept universal common descent despite the genetic evidence that is surfacing.
Genes live in almost infinite mathematical space and as the number of possible arrangements is larger then the resources of time since the origin of the earth. In addition to the problem of how genes are arranged there is a large waiting time problem for neutral or slightly beneficial changes to get fixed in a population.
When a duplicated gene mutates neutrally it will statistically move toward non function unless there is a reproductive advantage such as in the Lenski experiment where a second copy offered an instant reproductive advantage of consuming citrate
The Howe diagram and many similar Venn diagrams are strong evidence of multiple origin events.
In my lifetime I have been agnostic not questioning evolutionary theory. Theistic not questioning evolutionary theory and theistic believing macro evolutionary theory is an untested hypothesis. The trigger was learning that genes and proteins are sequence dependent. Many very smart and well educated people I know agree that this is a problem for evolutionary theory. Only a few of these people are theists.
The way to stop ID from making science look bad is to stop exaggerating what evolutionary theory explains because the testable aspects such as the environmental adaption of populations is very solid science,
There is a reason that a model of how reproductive mutation can generate new genes has has never been successfully demonstrated since the Wistar conference when the sequence problem was first publicly discussed.
I do understand if your desire is that no God exists who makes you potentially accountable for your actions the potential collapse of macro evolutionary theory is difficult. From a theistic stand point it is not that important as you are already invoking a potentially designed mechanism like gene duplication and reproduction to try and explain the theory.
Is the Wikipedia page on Intelligent Design biased?
I certainly hope so.
Bias towards factual description is important. The very first sentence of the Wikipedia article ID hits the nail on the head. And in a nicely concise manner. (Hmmm, also nicely put, if I do say so myself.)
Each of these animals have unique gene arrangements that appear responsible for generate unique features like feathers, placentas, obtaining energy from air or water etc. The evidence suggests that these arrangements are purposefully generating unique features. This hypothesis is testable with knockout experiments as more gene information becomes available. How many genes do you think you can randomly knock out in a mouse embryo before it can no longer survive at birth?
Not first names or specific campuses for their confidentiality. Dr Smith currently professor emeritus UC, Dr Modera professor UC retired. Dr Garland professor UC retired. Dr Buchman physician UC. Just about every one with a math background that learns how genes and proteins are organized and are ideologically neutral.
The one’s I do not know are all the mathematicians at the Wistar conference that first surfaced this argument in 1967.
The same genes are used for many different things, Bill. Look up the Notch and Hedgehog signaling pathways. They are so well conserved that we retain their Drosophila names.
Can you explain why those professors you mentioned insist on anonymity?
Also, could you give us some idea of how you went about determining that “just about every” “ideologically neutral” professor with a math background and who has learned how genes and proteins are organized agrees that they could not have arisen thru evolution?
Some genes are common to all vertebrates such as WNT, Notch and hedgehog. Some are unique to each animal. If you knock out the genes that produce gills in fish they will not survive. If you knock out the genes that produce a placenta in mice reproduction stops. The pathways you mentioned are cell cycle pathways.
If you need a unique set of genes to build a specific animal how do you eliminate separate starting points or origin events as an alternative hypothesis?