Patrick Elliott wrote:
> Wouldn't that be, "Why it doesn't make sense to doubt it?"

Yah. Forgive me. I've been ill. :-)

> this guy makes some common mistakes. First one is suggesting that their 
> are some huge number of *possible* combinations that would work. Really? 
> How does he determine this? 

Actually, I read somewhere that someone had figured out (well after that 
article was written) that there are something like 12 different 
isomorphic ways you can arrange the codons to do the same job. So 
instead of 41^22! or whatever it was, there were at least 12. :-)

> do anything at all, such as INC X followed immediately by DEC X. 

That's a completely different point. That just means there are genes 
that don't code for anything. He's assuming that there's no good reason 
for the bit patterns in the instruction set to be arranged in any given 
pattern for a particular instruction.

> But none of that really matters, since the article says *nothing* about 
> the likelihood of macro vs. micro,

So here's the question: What is "macro vs micro"?  How do you know when 
you have "macro" evolution? What makes something of two "kinds"?

I suspect you'll wind up coming up with a tautologically false answer, 
if you want to invent something that hasn't been observed.

> There is nothing in there that would suggest denial of common descent of 
> macro evolution.

Sorry. I meant it as an explanation of evidence in favor of common 
descent, regardless of how I misworded the original statement.

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     Remember the good old days, when we
     used to complain about cryptography
     being export-restricted?

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