Method

I find this a strange argument. Organic detritus causes rain to precipitate. But so does inorganic dust particles, such as fined grained clay. Water droplet nuclei seem to be a feature of the laws of physics, not divine intervention. This seems to be another case of describing something in nature behaving under natural laws and then tacking on "Goddidit" at the end. Could you please show us why God is needed for this to take place? This also relies on the Weak Anthropic Principle, where the final outcome is assumed to be the only possible outcome. An infamous counter-example is: "Do we have to design coffee cups so that they fit the coffee, or does the coffee conform to the coffee cup?" The same applies to life on Earth. Life adapts to the Earth, not the other way around.

Hydra are a colonial organism made up of two cell types (perhaps 3, can't remember). The same for the Man O'War. There is an interesting case of a multicellular organism evolving from a single celled organism. This new multicellular organism was classified in a new genus.

That was my fault. I thought you claimed to be a professional scientist when in fact you were claiming the opposite. I got a little excited and skipped the word "not". Please accept my apologies. The hemoglobin family was theoretically evolved through gene duplication. Here is an excerpt from here which is written by Douglas Futyama, a leading author in biology. I mean no offense, but is English your first language? If not, please ask for clarification where necessary. Even if English is your first language you can still ask. Anyway, all single celled life (bacteria, yeast, algae) does not have hemoglobin. Invertebrates also do not have hemoglobin but some do have hemocyanin, a protein that uses copper instead of iron like that found in hemoglobin. Only vertebrates (fish, mammals, reptiles, amphibians) use hemoglobin. If you want to read more do a google search using the following keywords (include the quotation marks): hemoglobin "vertebrate evolution".

If you are a scientist then you should have understood the implications of the abstract I posted above. It stated that Ciona intestinalis , a basal vertebrate (ie urochordata), does not have hemoglobin or myoglobin and yet these sea squirts inhabit temperate and tropical waters. Instead, these sea squirts use hemocyanin, but do have hemoglobin precursors which could have evolved later in vertebrate evolution.

No, they are not. Morphology and genetic material is passed down from generation to generation. This is seen today. DNA sequences of living species allow us to construct trees of similarities. The more similar the DNA the more recent the common ancestor between the two species. There are also fingerprints within the DNA, such as the ERV's used to establish human and chimp common ancestory, that could only come about through common ancestory. However, the methodologies used to establish common ancestory does not always tell us the exact order of mutations or exact genes that cause differences in morphology. So while the exact order of mutation and selection is unknown or extremely shaky, common ancestory is much easier and more concrete. As an analogy, paternity tests can establish who a child belongs to but it is unable to distinguish what genes make the child look slightly different than either parent. No, they all fall into a parsimonious nested hiearchy, the same arrangement predicted by the theory of evolution. Again, why was the egg of the ancestor chicken inadequate? Do you have evidence that the ancestor to the galliformes had an inadequate egg for the divergence of the group into their present species?

Why would you propose a crocodile egg? Chickens are birds, therefore the ancestor to chickens (Gallus gallus to be specific) would have been a bird. Chickens were originally bred from a wild stock of "proto-chickens" where their breeding was controlled by man. They were not allowed to interbreed with wild populations so they took on different characteristics over time. How are we "superior"? We can't breed a fast as bacteria. We can't run as fast as a cheetah. We can't swim as fast as a dolphin. We can't climb trees as well as a squirrel. The only thing superior about humans is our intelligence and our ability to mold our environment to our needs. In other areas we are actually inferior. There is no such thing as proof in science. Proof is for math and alcohol. Science uses tentative theories based on evidence. These theories can be changed by new evidence. No one is certain of the exact development of chickens, either morphologically or genetically. What can be shown is a large amount of evidence that chickens share common ancestory with other birds through similarities in morphology and genetic similarities. In fact, scientists are able to establish common ancestory between the chicken and the silver pheasant (Lophura nycthemera), Lady Amherst's pheasant (Chrysolophus amherstiae), ring-necked pheasant (Phasianus colchicus), turkey (Meleagris gallopavo), Western capercaillie (Tetrao urogallus), Chinese bamboo-partridge (Bambusicola thoracica) and common peafowl (Pavo cristatus) of the Phasianidae, and the plain chachalaca (Ortalis vetula) of the Cracidae. From this abstract (done by serious scientists): Why is this a problem if the ancestor of chickens already had eggs with a strong enough shell?

We didn't develop from any of those species that you listed. We share a common ancestor with all of those species. Evolution is not a ladder, it is a branching tree with the living species we see today the tips of those branches.

From just a quick read, and from memory, hemoglobins/myoglobins are found in the vertebrate phylogeny. The sea-squirt is recognized as a representative of the basal vertebrates and research has no active hemoglobin genes, but precursors are present . Hemocyanin is a protein that uses copper instead of iron for the binding of oxygen. Hemocyanins are also found in molluscs (as mentioned) and in crustaceans. It is also interesting that some bacteria use metallo-proteins to carry out chemical reactions involved in producing energy, such as some clostridial species that use ferredoxins containing around 4 iron molecules in conjuction with 4 sulfur molecules.

There is a paper by Hayashi et al. that gets to the heart of this matter. In this experiment they replaced a part of a gene with a random sequence. After this change the infectivity of the virus dropped 6 orders of magnitude, as would be expected if a gene involved in infection was messed with. However, this virus was allowed to evolve. They did this by finding the variants with the highest infectivity, and then using that clone as the parent for the next generation. Through this process they were able to evolve a virus that had a 240 fold higher infectivity rate than the original virus. A 37-fold increase was directly tied to the inserted random sequence which had undergone mutation and selection. If random sequences are mutated and add to the fitness of a virus, why can't the same thing occur in bacteria or even humans? Abstract:

And to add to Paul's question, how can we tell between a randomly generated genetic sequence and a genetic sequence from a living being? Can we do this by looking at the genetic sequence alone, or do you have to look at protein function? For instance, the phrase "Hand me a glass" has meaning outside of the action it causes in others. It seems to me that a genetic sequence has no meaning outside of the protein function it creates, or more generally the action it causes in the environment. This seems to indicate that DNA does not have a level of abstraction.

Science does not deny God any more than car manufacturing or geometry denies God. God, deities, nor any supernatural explanation is allowed in science because science works best when these are excluded. If you think differently, then cite one theory used in science today that rests solely on the existence of God and requires the input of a supernatural force to make the theory work. Science has a pretty good track record. Why mess with it? Secondly, there are many christians who both accept evolution and believe in God. They are called theistic evolutionists, Darwin being one of the first. If people can accept evolution and still believe in God your claim that science REQUIRES the denial of God is shown to be incorrect. Easy, turn it into a scientific discussion and leave the theology for what science can not explore, such as First Causes and the philosophical implications of our intelligence.

This is a science forum. It discusses the viability of a scientific theory, which makes the discussion a scientific one. My only venture to the Bible Q&A was to ask a question which was sufficiently answered. My argument is that theology has no place in science, and that is the argument I defend here. If theology was not being thrust onto science I would not be here.

Firstly, all of the mutations were not selected for at once. Each step was selected for separately. The lactose enzymae was selected for first, then the operon gene, etc. Therefore, not all of them had to happen at once. Nothing can be shown to be true unless it is potentially falsifiable.

Well, atheists stay out of church. Why can't creationists stay out of science?

And why is it impossible that this new gene was produced through a random mutation? Hall had to screen millions of different clones before he found a few that passed. If these mutations were preprogrammed, why don't we see the same mutant with the same mutation 50% of the time instead of less than 0.01% of the time? It is like saying that some one was pre-destined to win the lottery because they won the lottery. It doesn't make sense once you look at the evidence. More importantly, how does one falsify pre-programmed mutations? This is the most important part of the hypothesis and one you haven't touched on.