Hi RazD

“The king is dead, long live the king”. How true, from Paley’s watch to ID theory, almost the same failed argument, pretty much the same rebuttal but the fallacy lives on. The problem seems to be that most Creationists don’t read science they only read Creationist websites. Creationist websites are almost never written by people who actually understand the science they lampoon so badly. Kent Hovind and Carl Baugh are classic examples of this. Both have so many really really bad arguments that AIG has devoted quite a bit of web space to listing them in their “Arguments we think creationists should not use page”. Even the more educated and rational YEC’s cringe when they hear some of these really bad arguments but if you don’t read a balanced article and learn a little science how would you know that Carl’s hydrogen metal shell around the earth theory for the flood contradicted every scrap of evidence we have in so many way’s and in so many different fields of science that it’s just incredible. How many fallacies can one person spin into one paragraph!!!

Yes, the first part is duplication of parts - so radial symmetry is easy - and the second part is adaptation to bilateral symmetry. Nor is the symmetry "perfect" nor even complete: we have a dominant side for every paired feature and there are many non-paired elements (internal organs).

Yes HOX links the same code repeatedly while duplication gives several versions of the code which can then evolve in different directions in much the same was as Allopatric speciation takes two lines in different directions after they are physically separated.

Maybe a computer analogy would work better for Russ T. Think of the HOX gene’s as your Sub Main() function and the gene’s for the eye as a function you call twice when building a person.

VB wasn’t it Russ T

Sub Main()
' Scalp(RedHair)
' Forhead()
' Eye(Left, blue)
' Eye(Right, blue)
' Ear(Left, Big)
' Ear(Right, Big)
' Nose()
' Mouth()
'
'
'
End sub

Sub Eye(Side as byte, colour as integer)
' Socket(Side)
' Ball(Side)
' Retina(Side)
' Lense(Side)
' OpticNerve(Side)
'
' 'etc
'
End Sub
You get the idea I’m sure. And yes the HOX genes are physically organized in the order in which the parts appear in the body being built. Physically swapping parts will create a body that is organised in the order that they appear in the HOX. Substitution also works as you’d expect, that’s how fruit flies with legs instead of antenna are artificially created. HOX is so well understood that we can recode it to do what we want within limits of course.

Science 25 June 1999: Vol. 284. no. 5423, p. 2108 DOI: 10.1126/science.284.5423.2108
Test Tube Evolution Catches Time in a Bottle by Tim Appenzeller
And the creationist eyes quickly scan down to where this section ends before again reading the context ... they have evolved to ignore dangerous information ...

LOL exactly as I said above, they want to read something from Kent Hovind who confirms their preconceptions rather than delve into the true science of whatever topic it is they are looking at, not all of them but most, most of those who stick at it anyway, most who really delve with an open mind work out something’s fishy with the common YEC arguments after a while.

I knew the Octopus had its retina built the right way around unlike us, thus proving the fallacy behind Hovinds arguments that our way is necessary, but I didn’t know they adjusted focus in such a different way. Fascinating!

All the best

Russell