C.J.O'Brien
Posts: 395
Joined: Aug. 2005
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| Quote | | A genome would have an ability of mounting directed searches if specified portions were allowed to mutate more readily than others, and if these "optimized" regions of genetic flexibility were located at strategic points so that the metabolic changes they produced would have a (relatively) high probability of solving the environmental crisis of the hour. |
You're glossing over the real obstacle to the existence of a "look-ahead function" in the genome. Which is identifying, in advance, "the environmental crisis of the hour." This is where skeptic goes off the rails in his bid to reinvent evolutionary theory, and it's something you don't seem to have given much thought to, either.
In your example of antibiotic resistance, you ask "do bacteria indeed rely on a strictly random search for resistance," and this puts the whole thing on a misleading teleological foundation that doesn't exist. What bacteria "rely on" is the diversity of the population before there's any environmental crisis. A few individuals, by chance, already have a mutation that happens to confer resistance to the unfamiliar agent. Over generations, the descendants of these variants come to dominate the population.
ericmuurphy pointed out to skeptic, on his thread, that teleology is always found to be the wrong answer in biology. "Hard to believe," for some people, but demonstrably true, nonetheless.
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The is the beauty of being me- anything that any man does I can understand.
--Joe G
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