[continued from previous message]   
      
   > and got absorbed by the Neanderthals, so it makes Neanderthals more   
   > closely related to modern humans than are Denisovans.  When has enough   
   > micro evolution occurred in order to call it macro evolution?   
      
   Many creationists accept microevolution (probably a majority?), e.g.   
   Darwin's finches. This is the standard ID position.   
      
   Therefore, you're begging the question by asserting as fact that   
   macroevolution is essentially microevolution + time.   
      
   Nothing to see here folks.   
      
      
   >   
   > Ron Okimoto   
   >   
   >   
   >>   
   >>>   
   >>>>   
   >>>> The issue though is not what fraction of the possible protein space   
   >>>> life has explored, but rather how explorable is it? E.g. is it   
   >>>> sparse plains with occasional local maxima, or is it a rugged   
   >>>> terrain of endless valleys and ridges? In either case, the maxima   
   >>>> will be mostly undiscoverable to incremental search relying on   
   >>>> incremental improvements each conferring survival advantage   
   >>>> sufficient to drive the associated mutation to fixation in the   
   >>>> population.   
   >>>   
   >>> Your adaptive immune system would not work if the search parameters   
   >>> were what you want them to be.  Biological evolution by descent with   
   >>> modification works because the space that needs to be searched is   
   >>> minimal and within what is possible.  Really, new antibodies that   
   >>> bind specific antigens would not be routinely selected for by an   
   >>> immune response if the search parameters were too distant from the   
   >>> existing protein sequences.  If you look up the abzyme work where   
   >>> they use the adaptive immune system to evolve new enzymatic activity   
   >>> you will find that they have found that less than 10 changes in the   
   >>> antibody sequence can produce the new enzymatic activity that was   
   >>> selected for.  It wasn't just any enzymatic activity, but the one   
   >>> that they were selecting for.   
   >>>   
   >>> The paper that you put up trying to claim that too many new genes   
   >>> needed to be produced to evolve multicellular animals should have   
   >>> told you that very little protein space seems to have been needed to   
   >>> be searched. Those thousands of new genes evolved after a basic set   
   >>> of genes had already evolved, and they evolved over a billion year   
   >>> period before the Cambrian explosion.  The initial gene set had been   
   >>> evolving for over 2 billion years to produce that Eukaryotic gene   
   >>> set.  It looked like nearly all the new genes that evolved within the   
   >>> billion year period before the Cambrian explosion had evolved from an   
   >>> existing gene.  You should have seen that in their tables of the   
   >>> origins of the new genes.   
   >>>   
   >>> It just turns out that very little protein space has had to be tested   
   >>> to get to where we are now.   
   >>>   
   >>>>   
   >>>> The way to and up countless Mount Improbables need to be largely   
   >>>> smooth and monotonically increasing.   
   >>>   
   >>> The mount improbables are only in your head.  What exists are just   
   >>> additions to what had already existed.   
   >>>   
   >>>>   
   >>>> I realise too that this not a settled question, and in some   
   >>>> instances a random polymer can be effecively to function, e.g.   
   >>>> https:// journals.plos.org/plosone/article?   
   >>>> id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0000096&utm_source=chatgpt.com   
   >>>   
   >>> The likely reason that nearly all new genes have evolved from   
   >>> existing genes is that just a random sequence of amino acids will   
   >>> fold up and could have some function, but most random sequences do   
   >>> not efficiently produce the same structure.  It can take time to fold   
   >>> up, and the sequence might not fold up into the same structure every   
   >>> time.  De novo coding sequence that produces a new protein has to go   
   >>> through a selective process where the sequence needs to further   
   >>> evolve so that it will efficiently fold up into its functional   
   >>> structure.  Genes that have existed for billions of years already   
   >>> fold up efficiently, and it turns out that just changing the sequence   
   >>> a little can produce a new function, so we end up with related gene   
   >>> families.   
   >>>   
   >>> There is even some stability issues with existing proteins, and   
   >>> chaperone proteins have evolved to help them maintain the shape they   
   >>> need to be in in order to function.   
   >>>   
   >>> It is just how life has adapted to reality.   
   >>>   
   >>> Ron Okimoto   
   >>>>   
   >>>>   
   >>>>>   
   >>>>>>   
   >>>>>> ID posits a lawlike conservation of information, which I find   
   >>>>>> intuitively appealing, but Dembski's efforts to formally define   
   >>>>>> this have yet to land it seems.   
   >>>>>>   
   >>>>>>   
   >>>>>>   
   >>>>>>   
   >>>>>>   
   >>>>>   
   >>>>   
   >>>   
   >>   
   >   
      
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