So what evidence would disprove your position?
the empirical sort, direct repeatable testing, measurement, predictive ability even
I already have a thread dealing with that evidence, and you have yet to really engage the evidence found in the opening post.
The Evidence for Random Mutations
" if random mutations are responsible for the differences between species then we should see this bias when we compare genomes"
And if the geocentric model of the solar system is correct, we should
expect to see the sun cross the sky, it's a fairly flimsy logical argument for anything. But I do take your point though, so allow me to blow it out of the water in more detail
apologies for the long post in advance but it's kinda interesting stuff
The substance of the observation is that there is an inherent asymmetry in the construction of nucleotides which give them certain individual characteristics, good so far?
And so if these idiosyncrasies are arbitrary, do nothing other than to make certain errors more or less likely for no particular reason- then we would expect to see them distributed in common ancestors- i.e. through the action of mere common descent as opposed to being actively present as the result of a specific intended function yes?
We already discussed the 'inverted retina'- long assumed to be a similar inherited arbitrary design glitch, before we understood it's elegant and sophisticated purpose. And yes, we see the exact same thing here:
The four DNA nucleotides represent a quaternary, or base-4 digital information system, as opposed to a binary or base-2 one.
But what their asymmetry does is to allow each nucleotide in itself to also represent a four-digit
binary number. The first three digits represent the three bonding sites that each nucleotide presents to its partner. Each site is either a hydrogen donor or acceptor; a nucleotide offering donor-acceptor-acceptor sites would be represented as 100 and would only bond with an acceptor-donor-donor nucleotide, or 011. The fourth digit is 1 if the nucleotide is a single-ringed pyrimidine type and 0 if it is a double-ringed purine type. Nucleotides readily bond with members of the other type.
The practical upshot of all this malarkey, is that the 4 binary digits of each nucleotide all add up to an even number, making errors less likely overall. i.e. DNA employs what we call
parity bit error checking in our digital information systems, only in a far more sophisticated system: as it uses a
binary error checking system to process a
quaternary string of information.
But the larger point is not simply that this is a brilliantly elegant and efficient design, it's that when you try to happen upon such systems by trial and error, you run out of nanoseconds the universe has existed, elementary particles, googolplexes, to attempt to quantify the number of random tries required to happen upon it by sheer fluke.
Regarding design through random rolls of the die.. it' a nice simple, intuitive assumption to work from, but when the die keeps rolling six, at some point you have to acknowledge that it's loaded, whether we like the implications of that or not
