Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

Evolutionists Are Now Going Wild With “Lateral” Evolution And One Evolutionist Said “There is Nothing to Criticize”

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Do you remember when evolution was supposed to follow a common descent pattern, with genes passed down (“vertically” in evolution lingo) from progenitor to progeny? Then the evidence got in the way as similar genes were found in more distant species, violating the expect evolutionary pattern. So evolutionists took their first drink of lateral evolution. And of course the drinking continued. And continued. Soon the origin of life riddle, for instance, was transformed into one massive lateral evolution event, with genetic material readily being exchanged between cells in the same population via an incredibly complex, never observed, process that cannot be repeated or tested. Similarly lateral, or horizontal, evolution is being called upon to explain all kinds of findings that violate common descent’s expected pattern, as in the following example of evolutionists gone wild.  Read more

Comments
Did I say similar ? do you have an alternative explanation ? I'm all earsStarbuck
March 17, 2012
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"The STC gene sequences are closely related." Meaning, what? The sequences are similar? For a minute there it sounded like you were suggesting that the fact the sequences are similar must mean that one arose from the other. Of course that would be an assumption going beyond the actual empirical observation that the sequences are similar.Eric Anderson
March 17, 2012
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The STC gene sequences are closely related. However, they are found in organisms from different lineages off the main eukaryotic line of descent. So the most probable explanation is lateral transfer. In a few tens of millions of years, the sequence similarity of non-coding regions tends to drift to become unrecognizable. similarly codon usage of genes tends to drift towards the standard codon usage of the host organism through neutral mutations. Otherwise, there would be independent signatures.Starbuck
March 17, 2012
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