I go away for a couple hours and this happens? Sheeesh!
What edwino said.
Sheesh, Att. Didn’t you see the OPer’s “I believe” comment above? That’s a dead giveaway, even if you missed the rest of the so-called proof, that it’s just more creationist bul…er, nonsense coming down the pike.
I’m sorry, but that is a very interesting idea on the surface. And pretty damn powerful too. serriously… it states (to me) that evolution seems to occur because an organism’s mutations respond to a change in the environment in a sometimes favorable way.
But if everything was created-- ok, just if!-- to include a bunch of seemingly useless genes which only manifest themselves as mutations in response to an environmental change… All species contain all their possible variations already in their genetic code…
Dear God, I think I understood what a creationist meant. :eek: Someone, quick, hot water… hot water!
Ah, ok-- whew! Thanks guys. Almost had me going for a second there 
Yes, my theory is built in diversity which is expressed when needed as opposed to diversity being dependent on chance (Evolution).
Using the analogy of the wolf again: I would argue that morphology is a built in response, like when wolves in the arctic get white fur.
An evolutionist would argue that that diversity only comes about as a result of experiencing arctic conditions, kind of like trial and error.
I believe that this theory is just as valid as evolution since we still have so much to learn about genetics.
I will admit that those creationist arguements I gave earlier were aimed at Classical Darwinism and not the revised Neo-Darwinism that you guys probably know and which holds a lot more credibility.
Nevertheless I am sticking with my theory of “design” which is not the same thing as creationism.
me = Designism (I know it’s not a word)
I believe that when we learn enough about genetics we will discover that diversity is built in.
These debates almost always follow the same posting pattern. The creationist/moonlandinghoaxer/astrologist/whatever arrives on the scene with a fanfare. A few posters give half hearted replies mostly along the lines of “this has been done before, we can’t be bothered”. The creationist/moonlandinghoaxer etc bravely replies a few times to these half hearted efforts, often taunting that contra posters are not answering because they can’t. Then the heavyweights come in with some solid shredripping (hah, a new verb "the act of ripping someone or something to shreds!).
And suddenly the OP’er is gone. Silence. Nada. Run away.
Why do they bother? Perhaps it’s a jihad kind of thing. Their leaders tell them that if they bravely go forth and do battle with the forces of the evil evolutionists they will go straight to heaven. See you in heaven, Hiyruu, cos experience says that we won’t be seeing you back in this thread.
So your design allows for some single-cell animal of three billion years ago to include the coding to eventually become human (with the correct pressures, of course) while its single-cell neighbor had the coding to build an apatasaurus? And throughout time, the coding is there for one species to morph into another so that we have a clear expression of descent (one species succeeding another through time)? Then what, in your coding, prevents a species from moving backward to a previous step when the environment in which it evolved shifted back to conditions similar (or identical) to what they had been?
You were saying?
The participative and substantive contribution to this thread of your last post makes my point for me nicely I believe.
that was an amusing simulpost.
H, I’m glad I did understand what you meant. It is-- to me-- a really interesting notion. Do you feel, then, that only a natural disaster or species domination can cause extinction?
And, sorry, is there a higher power that made this design? For my own edification, but I need to know what kind of questions I shouldn’t ask for context. You did mention you weren’t christian, but i don’t understand if the built-in diversity is mean to be deliberate on the part of some creator or not. Thanks 
No, I said that species have archetypes, like the canines have a wolf as their first genetic type. Elephants would have a mamoth as their first genetic type.
So these Archetypal progenitors have the greatest built in diversity. Notice how many chromosones a wolf as when compared to a domesticated dog, this is because the wolf has a greater built in potential.
Where did the archetypes come from? I cannot answer this, but neither does evolution in my mind.
Dammit dammit dammit. It was actually a triple simultaneous post. I posted my seemingly now unwarranted comment at the same time as H posted a substantive comment, who then posted a justifiably sarcastic reply, at the same time as I posted another now seemingly unwarranted comment about his second sarcastic reply, not having seen at that time his first substantive reply. Or something. Sorry H.
I dunno. It seems, then, that you arbitrarily start the clock running just a few million years ago, when I think the evidence shows enough scattered relatives to go back hundreds of millions of years. I’m sorry that you cannot accept the solutions presented in Neo-Darwinian Natural Selection, but dropping Plato into the middle of a scientific inquiry leaves me cold.
There is no built in diversity. We can see mutations in genes of wolves which lead to differences in dogs. We can see mutations associated with Y chromosome haplotypes which we can use to trace human populations from the time that they diverged from apes. In the days of high-throughput genome sequencing, we are pretty sure of what is contained in genomes and what is not. We are quite sure that there is no environment-feedback-to-genome, and that there is no “dormant diversity” of this scale contained in genomes.
Please try again.
As someone more intelligent than I said, adding God to the equation only doubles your problem. We have many good explanations of how things like the circulatory system and the eye arose. Even better, we have fossil, genetic, and taxonomic evidence that things actually worked that way. The theory of evolution is based on these observations, and works on these observations. Also, for every example of “irreducible complexity” you give, I can give you 2 examples of evolutionary dead ends which make no sense if we were omnisciently created.
I checked the journals last week and to date, there is still no evidence for a creator.
tomndebb:
Do you think that we have an honest-to-IPU Last Thursdayist here?
I want you guys to look at a specific species and see the difference in chromosome number between two genetic realatives such as the domesticated dog and the wolf.
My theory is that a species will have a common ancestor who contains the greatest built in genetic potential (greatest number of chromosomes). As that ancestor moves to a different climactic region or has a specific survival need it will express those built in genes that are meant for that given situation.
The best way to do this is to track the movement of a species geographically and observe it’s genetic mutation in response to environmental change.
Within your scheme, how do you explain the fact that the physical arrangement of hemoglobin genes in the genome is the same as their arrangement in the “family tree” which evolutionists have derived showing which gene evolved from which?
Also, what about pseudogenes? What purpose do they serve?
Incidentally, you said earlier that evolutionists can’t explain where genes come from. Don’t you think my FAQ provides the evolutionist explanation?
-Ben
Ok, a lot of you guys are claiming that I said stuff that I did not in fact say.
I am not a creationist I simply belive in DESIGN as a natural phenomenon.
Sorry, but I really do want to know if you feel there is a creator behind all of this.
I know that people who follow evolution closely feel that adding a creator passes the buck but I do think this is a pretty fucking interesting idea FWIW.
It doesn’t seem to explain many of the little mysteries here and there, and as such is most likely false, but it is a fascinating idea none-the-less.
H, it would seem that there would have to be many different “origins” here. Sort of like… the macro evolution process is factually correct, but the start from a single point for all life is not. Yeah? Like, say, humans and apes share a common ancestor, but humans and birds do not.
So how does design without a creator make sense? If there’s no creator, who did the designing?
Incidentally, I think this might be relevant to one of your questions (I’m tardigrade, BTW):
-Ben