DNA, Where did the code come from?

No betting required, just stay open to the possibility

There is the question you asked and I answered.

With respect to 1, above, (random mutations) theorists like Lamarck had to be utterly vilified and never spoken of with an ounce of respect ever again. All notions of teleology (purpose) HAD to be eliminated if the godless doctrine which Dawkins so admires was to stand unquestioned.

Punctuated equilibrium is commonly contrasted against phyletic gradualism, the belief that evolution generally occurs uniformly and by the steady and gradual transformation of whole lineages (called anagenesis). In this view, evolution is seen as generally smooth and continuous.

Eldredge and Gould proposed that the degree of gradualism commonly attributed to Charles Darwin is virtually nonexistent in the fossil record, and that stasis dominates the history of most fossil species....Before Eldredge and Gould alerted their colleagues to the prominence of stasis in the fossil record, most evolutionists considered stasis to be rare or unimportant. George Gaylord Simpson, for example, believed that phyletic gradual evolution (called horotely in his terminology) comprised "nine-tenths" (90%) of evolution.

The sudden appearance of most species in the geologic record and the lack of evidence of substantial gradual change in most species—from their initial appearance until their extinction—has long been noted, including by Charles Darwin who appealed to the imperfection of the record as the favored explanation. Darwin needed to forcefully stress the gradual nature of evolution [writing] "...If species really, after catastrophes, created in showers world over, my theory is false."

The concept of punctuated equilibrium was, to some, a radical new idea when it was first proposed by Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldredge in 1972. Now it is widely recognized as a useful model for one kind of evolutionary change. The relative importance of punctuated and gradual patterns of evolution is a subject of debate and research.

I have been reluctant to admit it—since beguiling is often forever—but if Mayr's characterization of the synthetic theory is accurate, then that theory, as a general proposition, is effectively dead, despite its persistence as textbook orthodoxy" (Gould, 1980).

It does not seem reasonable to refer to modern evolutionary theory as "Darwinism," "neo-Darwinism," or the "Modern Synthesis," since all of these terms refer to a version of evolutionary theory that has been modified to such an extent that the old-fashioned terminology is just confusing.

The "Modern Synthesis" is dead. Long live modern evolutionary theory.

Rhetorical skills hve made PE a sweetheart deal for Creationists who want to use it as a refutation of evolution.

Many feel tht the whole concept is a pimple on a cows ass.