BIOLOGIC UNIVERSALS —
—— “What I meant to say was that the first living thing would not have been missing many (if any) biological universals.”
I challenge you to find any leading origin-of-life researcher who even remotely agrees with your assertion.
—— “if all organisms are descended from the same original organism, they should have inherited the genetic code of this organism. All organisms should have the same genetic code (with a possibility of a rare variation here and there).”
There are potent objections to your argument. First, you (and Francis Crick, and others) already identified a means whereby the genetic code can drift without limit, and therefore evolutionists have no scientific reason why, for example, yeast and elephants should share the same genetic code.
Second, evolutionists discovered that our genetic code itself shows substantial design, and is not a randomly “frozen accident” of happenstance as had previously been thought. From these evolutionists’ point of view, it is highly improbable the first genetic code on Earth was much like ours. Instead, these evolutionists suggest many genetic codes existed, and evolved, on this planet. Once again, evolutionary theory does not make your prediction.
—— “What I was doing was giving a plausible explanation of why other forms of life did not exist. Even if you reject it as unscientific…” (italics added)
Yes, I reject your explanation as untestable, and therefore unscientific (under the same criteria evolutionists use in all their court cases). Walter ReMine claims evolutionary theory is a structureless smorgasbord of storytelling and able to “explain” virtually anything and its opposite — macro-evolutionary theory is untestable, and therefore unscientific.
—— “the genetic code provides a way for us to test assertions about which animals are related,”
That is misleading. If each of the animal phyla had a different genetic code, then evolutionary theory could effortlessly accommodate that observation. “These genetic changes,” evolutionists would say, “happened way back before the Cambrian Explosion, lost in the mists of time” and blah, blah, blah, you can figure the rest. Evolutionists could explain it as many separate origins of life, for example. Evolutionary theory never predicted a unified genetic code. You are wrong to pretend it does.
As ReMine notes: If evolutionary theory has anything clear to say about the biochemical unity of life, it predicts this unity should not exist. On this issue, evolutionary theory is either false, or unfalsifiable — and either way it is unscientific.
The biochemical unity of life also falsifies any notions that life came from multiple designers acting independently, such as ancient astronauts or extraterrestrial civilizations. Rather, all life must have come from one source — a single designer — precisely as predicted by Message Theory. This is a testable (potentially falsifiable) prediction, straight from the core of Message Theory.
Concerning the biochemical unity of life, Message Theory is testable science; and evolutionary theory is not.
ATAVISM, TRANSPOSITION, AND “CONVERGENCE” —
—— “How could the genetic material from the tail of a fish have survived over 200 million years, still in usable form, without having been altered at all?”
In Stephen Jay Gould’s book, Hen’s Teeth and Horse’s Toes, the “Hen’s Teeth” from the title was allegedly an example of an Atavism (genetic throwback) from 80 million years ago. Evolutionists “explained” its maintenance in the genome as the result of pleiotropy and selection. This demonstrates that modern evolutionists are quite willing to invoke Atavisms crossing long periods of time. Darwin and the early Darwinists’ invoked Atavism, and so do modern evolutionists.
Evolutionists were never seriously limited by their inability to experimentally demonstrate their macro-evolutionary explanations. They have not remotely demonstrated the transformation of, say, a horse into something as different as, say, a pig. Or a dog into a cat. Yet these would be exceedingly minor transformations compared to the evolutionists’ claims. Also, evolutionists have not experimentally demonstrated any great convergence transformation, such as your example: the so-called whale-tail / fish-tail convergence. Instead, evolutionists are moved by pattern: When evolutionists see a pattern, they “explain” it by selecting a story from their vast structureless smorgasbord of naturalistic explanations. Evolutionists are driven by pattern. Throughout history, evolutionists invoked (and sometimes later renounced) their explanations due solely to their perception of pattern — this is a nearly universal phenomenon. To evolutionists, pattern is king. Therefore, the designer of life wisely designed life’s patterns to resist macro-evolutionary explanations.
For example, had the whale-tail and fish-tail been identical, then the ancient Greeks, and the early Darwinians, (as well as modern evolutionists too), would have had little restraint in claiming it was due to Atavism or Transposition. Life’s-designer wisely resisted those explanations by omitting Atavism and Transposition patterns. Evolutionists are left with their least plausible explanation: The independent origin and “convergence” of complex designs that cannot be explained by common descent. This pattern is abundant in nature, as predicted by Message Theory.
—— “Evolutionists would expect that the two tails originated differently, and since we know that there are often many solutions to a problem, we would expect the two lineages to have ‘hit on’ different solutions.”
In every respect, that statement is false or misleading. Evolutionists, from the ancient Greeks, to the early Darwinians, to modern evolutionists, invoked Atavism-Transposition explanations, therefore it is false to claim evolutionary theory “expects” those to be absent. There is one, and only one, over-riding reason why these explanations are seldom given: These patterns are substantially absent. And that is predicted by Message Theory.
As ReMine points out, if convergences were identical, they would no longer be “convergences”: instead evolutionists would explain them as Transpositions or Atavisms.
—— “No, convergent evolution is the only thing that explains why the two are different.”
Again you focus on “explanation”, as though that were scientifically sufficient. Your whale-tail convergence explanation cannot remotely be demonstrated experimentally, nor is it testable; therefore it is unscientific. It is an unscientific story, given with religious fervor.
ODDS AND ENDS —
—— “So when creatures are different its not evidence against your theory, but when they’re created similarly, its evidence for your theory? Who’s being unscientific now?”
You are being reckless. You are already aware (from Walter ReMine’s essay) that the existence of even one natural living being, sufficiently different or dis-united from our system of life, would falsify Message Theory. Message Theory makes testable scientific predictions about the things we should see, and should not see.
—— “your definition of evolution which includes the origin of life (which is not the standard)”
You are being needlessly (without legitimate purpose) evasive over the definition of “evolution”. In the origins debate, “evolution” (and evolutionary theory) refers to naturalistic transformation all the way from rocks (if not before) to people, and anything less is creation. This point is neither controversial, nor unfair. As Walter ReMine points out, the evolutionists’ insistence on keeping the origin-of-life as a “separate issue” had the effect of concealing/obscuring the evolutionists’ self-contradictions — for example, the contradictions between Dobzhansky and the origin-of-life theorists.
—— [Walter wrote:] “For example, the up-down tail of whales (versus the side-to-side tail of fish) cannot be explained by common descent, nor by Atavism (or genetic throwback),”
—— [Your response:] “Bullshit. I have already explained how whales move their bodies in a way similar to that of land mammals when they swim. It’s a modification of the same muscles. Do you have a problem reading or something?”
The evolutionary relationship between whale-tail and fish-tail (which is the issue you raised) is not explained by common descent, but instead by independent origin and so-called “convergence”. But you knew that already …so why are you making stink?
