Re: The Common Origin of Coin Flips

On Mar 14, 12:40 pm, Seanpit <seanpitnos...@naturalselection.
0catch.com> wrote:
On Mar 13, 6:09 pm, John Harshman <jharshman.diespam...@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:



Seanpit wrote:
On Mar 12, 1:40 pm, John Harshman <jharshman.diespam...@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

[snip]

I mean, if you want to go with nothing more than "logic" here, it
doesn't seem logical to me for someone to use the genes and proteins
of a bird to build a wing on a mammal.

I agree, unless of course that wing happened to be a bird wing rather
than a mammal wing.

That doesn't make any sense to me. A bat wing doesn't use bird genes
even though it has the same essential function - because it is part of
a different basic type of animal.

As a matter of fact, a bat wing, which is composed of bones of the
forelimb, and bird wings, which is also composed of bones of the
forelimb, *do* use the same genes. There are different genes
(modified keratins) that are involved in producing feathers, but the
difference in bony wing structure is not due to the use of "different
genes".

There is simply no reason that an
intelligent designer would "mix-n-match" here. Using a NHP is obvious
given the interacting system of life - variations on variations on a
theme.

But what do you mean by "mammal"? According to you there should be no
such thing. "Mammal" is just a name we choose to give to a particular
collection of unrelated kinds.

I've never said that at all. All mammals are very much "related". It
is just that some very similar features that are used to classify
mammals are actually found in other creatures as well - like "milk"
for example. It is just that cockroaches that happen to produce milk
to feed their young are not "mammalian" in almost every other way.

And, of course, the evidence that cockroach "milk" was *independently*
evolved is also there. This is claiming that all "milk" is
*structurally* the same thing, which is the opposite of your argument
with wings. *Function* is not *structure*. That is the problem you
have. When the same *function* is occurs in already diverged
lineages, the same exact *structural* solution is rarely observed. In
many cases, like the wings of the three vertebrates who have acquired
the *function* of flight, there are superficial similarities, but the
detailed solution is clearly not "borrowed" horizontally. It is
*independently* derived from within the lineage, with every appearance
of being "designed" ('appearance of design' is not 'design') by
someone without any knowledge of the previous, current, or future
"designs" that accomplish the same *function*. Constraints may limit
wing designs in vertebrates to modifications of the forelimb, but that
does not dictate the details of wing design.

It seems much more logical to
use mammalian genes that are already there in the mammalian system to
build a wing for flight. It requires fewer genetic elements that way
to get the same basic functional variations in different basic types
of organisms.

What do you mean by "different basic types"? This claim of yours only
makes any sense if all mammals are the same "basic type". But you don't
think that, if by "basic type" you mean "kind". And if you don't mean
"kind", what coudl you possibly mean?

I mean a set of creatures that share many similarities with each other
which other basic "kinds" of creatures do not share as a set.
Pointing to one particular feature at a time usually doesn't exclude
all non-mammalian creatures. It is by pointing to a set of
characteristics that mammals are set apart as "unique".

> It only makes good design sense to build using the
"natural" NHP overall - at least to me.

That's only because you have decided beforehand that whatever we see is
going to be something that makes sense in the light of separate
creation. If we really explored how this makes sense to you we would
very soon reach a halt in your reasoning, because you haven't really
tried to think this through at all.

Perhaps not . . . But you sure haven't come up with any logical
reason why a designer of life should have mixed and matched instead of
using the more obvious NHP approach. The NHP approach just seems more
"logical" or "reasonable" given the system of Life.

Common descent, as a mechanism of change, is, at least almost always
in the case of the one intelligent designer we can observe and make
false analogies from, a consequence of the inability of the designer
to foresee the future. That is, it is an unintelligent process.

Magical poofing does not require the appearance of common descent.

Sean Pitmanwww.DetectingDesign.com

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