Perhaps the most important point that Walter made in the debate was this:
"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."
What he refers to are the mechanisms I explained about how codons can come to code for different amino acids. He thinks that this means that (with enough time) the genetic code could completely change (you'll have to read the essay I wrote in order to understand this). Here is my response:
"I’d like to once again call attention to the study cited previously showing that “silent mutations” affect protein production:
I feel this has relevance to this debate, and here’s why: In organisms with large genomes, completely deleting a specific codon and replacing it with another would affect protein production, and such a drastic change, across the whole genome (many proteins) would almost certainly be lethal (indeed, the article notes how these synonymous codons affect protein production, and how too much of a protein results in cell toxicity). This finding reinforces the idea that the genetic code is limited in how much it can change, and, therefore, a universal (or near universal) genetic code remains evidence of common descent."
