Re: Here's a possibility, but its a tall order; Harshman "got science," he can do it

On 16 Aug 2005 17:35:39 -0700, "MagentaStudios" <nick@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

>One of the key abilities of a good scientist is to have an open mind.
>That means if new evidence is presented that contradicts previous
>theories, Then old theories are abandoned and new ones take form.
>If you want to be taken seriously as scientists, you MUST be open to
>the possibility that you just might be wrong.
>
>So, that being said, what single piece of evidence would be sufficient
>to prove to you that Evolution is true? Keep it short and sweet.
>
>Please, no answers that are impossible to do, like traveling back in
>time or observing species over a million year time frame.

THE ILLUSIVE MECHANISM OF TRANSFORMATIONAL CHANGE
A good start would be to find and test the (so far illusive) genetic
mechanisms which progressively integrate random mutations into a
highly complex genome. The Punc Eq'er camp believed that a certain
kind of speciation was a marker indicating that such a mechanism
(and/or process) was in action but never found it. And then one
should demonstrate (preferrably in the laboratory) that the
mechanism(s) are capable of producing the kinds of transformational
change purported to be responsible for transforming a dinosaur forearm
into an avian wing.


DIFFICULTIES TO BE OVERCOME
It should be recalled that the mutations that have been observed so
far are predominantly neutral or sometimes deleterious but never
transformational to the extent proposed by neoDarwinians. The finch
beak changes observed by Darwin are akin to the changes in the
industrial moth. They are changes in relative frequency of
variability which already exists within the genome. The mechanism
must be able to explain how the variability arose in the first place.

MORE DIFFICULTIES
Anti-biotic resistance observations have demonstrated that some
mutations confer a positive selective value in specific environments
due to a loss of sensitivity to a particular molecule previously coded
for. Such mutants are usually unviable outside of the anti-biotic
environment and revert back outside of the environment. Furthermore
the fact that such mutations seem to appear (non randomly) exactly
when needed by the population tends to indicate a non neoDarwinian
change. Nevertheless neoDarwinians have yet to demonstrate how "loss"
of sensitivity is a building block of "progressive" transformational
change. Any such mechanism must be able to explain this.

....AND MORE...
Secularists must demonstrate how this genetic mechanism overcomes the
known mechanisms that hightly attenuate mutations: code redundancy,
the probability distribution of mutations which is not uniformly
distributed over all loci and a very precise error correction
mechanism. The new mechanism must also be able to overcome Haldane's
Dilemma.

....AND SOME FINAL DIFFICULTIES...
Some further difficulties: Gene duplication and the other known
"shuffling" mechanisms don't create "new" information they shuffle
existing information. The No Free Lunch Theorems demonstrate
conclusively that all evolutionary algorithms can be no more efficient
at finding "peaks" in a fitness landscape than is a blind search. In
other words the mechanism must explain how the tremendous diversity of
biological structures and systems could have been "found" via a blind
search in under 1 billion years.

This is a tall order. Good luck. But Harshman knows how to do
"science," he can do it. His definition of "observations" will solve
everything.

Regards,
T Pagano

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