@ACB,
ACB;86002 wrote:No, mutations don't just 'happen' by magic. In the normal course of events, there will occasionally be accidental physical interactions at the molecular level that make mutations happen.
Yes. But at the risk of sounding like a broken record, just the fact that various environmental conditions can cause/contribute to genetic change doesn't mean those changes which result in an improvement to an organism are a result of such forces.
For example, we know that the vast majority of non-directed mutation is destructive to or doesn't affect the organism (I'm excluding viruses, as most thinkers would). If one in a thousand is beneficial, then how do we know the other 99.99 per cent were the result of mechanical, random forces, and the single positive change was some other sort of influence?
Those who already believe in E-theory assume organism-positive change is something undirected because it fits what they already believe, and not because they have the proof of what causes positive genetic change.
Some of us object to that assumption because it has E-theory believers acting like E-theory is a "fact" and that anyone who questions it either doesn't understand E-theory or is generally ignorant.
If we debate this all year I will never alter where my question lies . . . it always is right at the point of what causes beneficial genetic change. However, let me narrow it down even more.
Some change like changes to a fruit fly penis or bird beaks, are simple adjustments to existing organ systems. Statistical analysis indicates it is in the realm of possibility that pure randomness could account for such changes, and then if the environment were such that the resulting change gave some breeding/survival advantage, that trait could come to have genomic significance.
But there are two possibilities for such change. If I built, for example, a robot I wanted to leave on a planet to perform tests in my absence for 100 years, I might make sure I had "adjustment" capability built into the robot so it could adapt to environmental changes that might occur during the 100 years I won't be there to fix it. Now you come along, find my robot and wonder what created it. You observe it's adaptive capabilities and conclude that must be what created the robot, when really adaptiveness doesn't have that sort of creative umph.
Similarly, E-theorists assume simple adaption, which we can observe, is the same force which created the organism in the first place. Why?
So my argument isn't that adaption doesn't happen, my argument is that nobody knows it is what created the organism, and it is merely assumed for the sake of preserving a belief system (E-theory).
But I can't merely assume that because I don't want to believe anything ahead of the evidence that would prove it. Personally I don't care what the truth is, I just want it. To me, that is how all truth seekers should be, so when I debate "believers" (no matter what the belief system), I always focus on the basis of their belief to see if they have the evidence to believe, or if they are jumping the gun because they want something to be true so much they decide to believe despite the lack of proper evidence.
