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Allele variation that generates different heights or melanin within various races, point mutations like sickle cell, the mutations that generate lactose tolerance in adults, or that affect our ability to process alcohol, are micro-evolution. They do not extrapolate to new tissues and proteins that define different species. I accept that polar bears descended from a brown bear, that the short-limb, heat-conserving body of an Eskimo was the result of the standard evolutionary scenario. I have no reason to doubt the Earth existed for billions of years.

Humans have hundreds of orphan genes unique among mammals. To say this is just an extension of micro-evolution relies on the... (read more)

The years thing seems to make everything probable, because we have basically 600 MM years of evolution from something simple to everything today, and that's a lot of time. But it is not infinite. When we look at what evolution actually accomplishes in 10k generations, it is basically a handful of point mutations, frameshifts, and transpositions. Consider humans have 50MM new functioning nucleotides developed over 6 million years from our 'common ape' ancestor: where are the new unique functioning nucleotides (say, 1000) in the various human haplogroups? Evolution in humans seems to have stopped. Dawkins has said given enough time 'anything' can happen. True, but in finite time a lot less... (read more)

Of the millions of proteins on the planet it is unremarkable most exist elsewhere, just as it's likely most parts in a car can be found in other machines. Further, these aren't identical proteins, merely 'homologous' ones, where there's a stretch of, say, a 70% match over 40% of the protein, so that makes this finding not surprising (lug nut in engine A like fastener in engine B). A Type 3 Secretory System has about 1/3 of the proteins in a flagellum (depends which T3SS, which flagellum), but to get from one to the other needs probably ten thousand new nucleotides in a specific constellation, and nothing close to that kind... (read more)

I'm a big Eliezer fan, and like reading this blog on occasion. I consider myself rational, Dunning-Kruger effect notwithstanding (ie, I'm too dumb or biased to know I'm not dumb or biased, trapped!). In any case, I think the above is pretty good, but I would stress the ID portion of my paper, which is in the PDF not the post, is that the evolutionary mechanism as observed empirically scales O(2^n), not O(n), generally, where n is the number of mutations needed to create a new function. Someday we may see evolution that scales, at which point I will change my mind, but thus far, I think Behe is correct in his... (read more)