Hi Russ T

Gadzuks you’ve actually put some real thought in to this Russ. Pleasant change! Let’s see how it stacks up.

Miss placed pity, ad homonym, accusations of lying, unsupported conspiracy theories, seriously misplaced appeals to authority and unsupported assertions not a good start Russ.

Evolution—in order to be widely accepted—had to be presented in such a way as to make the opposition look foolish.

I’ve never seen any sign that they need any help in this regard.

Hmm, that didn’t get me very far, I deleted all the non arguments and left only the factual discussions of the evidence and found the following.



End quote

Oh well, I’d hoped for more. You are right that there are many scientists working hard to try to understand in more detail how the HOX complex works, we certainly don’t understand it fully but we do understand a lot about it. We know for instance that our eyes are formed by the dual application of the exact same DNA twice once on the left and once on the right. If you modify or damage the description for how the eye is formed in a fruit fly it will have two faulty eyes with the defects mirrored, if you modify the HOX complex which places eyes you can produce more or less of them even place them in different locations.

In short we know enough about the HOX complex to know that your argument about symmetry is simply wrong. The evidence directly contradicts your complaints. Do you have any evidence to support your position or is it all just blather and illogic?

One point you have raised yet again that I think deserves an answer is the idea that I talk in technical language simply to confuse people here or to make them think I’m really clever. This is not true but let me demonstrate with an example. You seem to have some understanding of computers, I don’t know if you have a hardware or software background but try this anyway. Explain to everyone here the operation of a Flash ROM without using any technical jargon. You’re not allowed to use terms like electron tunnelling or NOR gates or P Channels etc. Give it a go Russ T. There are no common words for many of the things I’m describing. If anyone has a problem understanding the technical language needed to discuss these points they only have to ask and I’m happy to explain the lingo but if I had to explain every point that way it would take many more pages than this type of discussion board can handle. I’m sorry if I’m assuming too much from people here but if you wade into technical fields you are going to have to face up to technical language. Your complaints about symmetry are childish but they still delve into a technical field, developmental biology, so the answers are of necessity technical in nature and language.

There are literally hundreds of articles on the HOX gene complexes, their known functions and means of operation. Here’s a few that will begin to inform you of why you are so profoundly wrong when you complain that evolution can’t explain symmetry “because there’s no chance of same feature evolving twice in mirror form in a given organism”. You are wrong twice in this complaint, firstly evolution doesn’t have to produce duplicate, mirrored genes because HOX gene’s can duplicate and mirror a single DNA blueprint and Convergent evolution proves that evolution is quite capable of designing duplicates anyway.

Origins of Bilateral Symmetry: Hox and Dpp Expression in a Sea Anemone by John R. Finnerty, Kevin Pang, Pat Burton, Dave Paulson and Mark Q. Martindale - Science 28 May 2004: - Vol. 304. no. 5675, pp. 1335 – 1337 - DOI: 10.1126/science.1091946


DEVELOPMENTAL BIOLOGY: Hox Genes in the Limb: A Play in Two Acts by J. Deschamps (11 June 2004) - Science 304 (5677), 1610-1611. [DOI: 10.1126/science.1099162]

Boning Up on Hox Genes - (18 July 2003) - Science 301 (5631), 273. [DOI: 10.1126/science.301.5631.273h]

Combinatorial control of Drosophila eye development by Eyeless, Homothorax, and Teashirt by Jose Bessa, Brian Gebelein, Franck Pichaud, Fernando Casares, and Richard S. Mann - Gene’s and Development - Vol. 16, No. 18, pp. 2415-2427, September 15, 2002

I’m sorry but like most scientific articles they do, of necessity, use technical language.

In Rason

Russell