Summations Only

I think that you will find that the "evidence" you have been shown will turn out to be misinformation. Creationist sources are notoriously unreliable and dishonest.Nevertheless if you can manage to keep a productive attitude towards discussion you might be able to fit in here. (I just don't think that you will remain a creationist very long :-)

It's off-topic to go into a major discussion here, but to list some of the points.The twin nested hierarchy(see ongoing thread)The many transitional fossils that have been found.The known examples of speciationThe existence of ring speciesThe absence of any clear, hard boundaries that would suggest seperate origins for any group of life forms found currently.And that's just examples for evolution, without including the many things that some creationists tend to lump together as "evolution" (like geology, dating, cosmology...)Anyway since you claim to have these killer arguments against evolution why don't you actually start a thread to discuss them ? But don't be surprised if they are shot down in short order. As I said you have almost certainly been badly misinformed.

Answering your questions belongs in your new thread. It's interesting to note that you don't seem to have enough confidence in your "killer" arguments to try to argue about them.

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You're absolutely right. You should join us creationists, that's why we exist. If something's not true, we don't care what the majority believes or was brainwashed into believing, we only care about what is true which is why we stick our necks out against tremendous odds.

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That's the image creationists want to present. Now if it were true shouldn't you be presenting this evidence you claim to have rather than bragging ?

The argument doesn't make a lot of sense to me.Why would the LUCA have a minimal set of genes ? Wouldn't it be expected to have more than the absolute minimum ? Given evolution, rather than design.Secondly even if you could argue that the LUCA would have a minimal set of genes, don't you need to show that the genes you refer to ARE from the LUCA and AREN'T part of a minimal set or derived from a minimal set ? I don't see any argument to that effect.Also, suppose that the LUCA DID have a minimal set of genes and they DID allow for the evolution of modern life as we see it. Wouldn't that be an even better argument for front-loading ? And if that is true how can a non-minimal gene set in the LUCA be a prediction of front-loading ?Finally, the argument that non-teleological evolution wouldn't plan for the things we see is only useful if you can show evidence of planning for the things that we see today. Otherwise it really is a "the designer loves giraffes" argument.

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No, because the LUCA could easily have been a simple progenote (and, indeed, a number of papers have argued for this, which kinda indicates evolution doesn't predict a progenote or a non-progenote for LUCA), and, actually, the LUCA could have been a simple self-replicating molecule encoding only a few genes. A population of these self-replicators could then have branched off, eventually forming into the domains of life that we see today.

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However, whatever it was, it would not be expected to have a minimal gene set for whatever it was, would it ? Simplicity is more an aim of design rather than evolution. Once evolution gets going we should expect more complexity than is strictly needed.Come to that, isn't it also argued that there was a large amount of horizontal gene transfer in the early stages of life ? In that case we wouldn't be dealing with the genes for just one organism at all, We would have to consider every gene in every organism.

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Yes, of course. To determine that they aren't part of a minimal set, you need to do homology comparisons.

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Isn't your argument that there genes going back to the LUCA which are NOT part of a minimal set ? Surely homology tests will - at most - show if the LUCA likely had a homologous gene or not ?

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Huh? I have no idea where you're going with this.

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Suppose that rather than there being NO minimal gene sets that allowed for the evolution of life that we see today there were a VERY FEW - a very small proportion - that did. Wouldn't then, a LUCA with one of those gene-sets be entirely compatible with the concept of front-loading ?

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That's not my argument. I'm simply pointing out that the FLH makes a specific prediction which non-teleological evolution does not make. And it's not a case of "the designer wanted giraffe's" any more than evolutionary predictions are like that.

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For it to be a prediction, you have to show that a minimal gene set doesn't provide the flexibility needed - especially given the time available - and you haven't done that.

It is rather unclear what the Front Loading hypothesis has to do with the subject since the evidence offered is at present only speculative at best. However, we can see that the argument is very much overstated.First, given non-telic evolution it is very unlikely that the LUCA would have a minimal gene set. Evolution tends to unnecessary complexity, and if the additional genes are advantageous even a scenario where they are pruned away is extremely unlikely.When we include horizontal gene transfer the problem becomes even more acute since the LUCA and ancestors near it would be expected to acquire and keep additional advantageous genes.Given the massive horizontal gene transfer expected to occur, the LUCA must not only have a minimal gene set, all it's peers must have the same minimal gene set. This would seem to be far more likely given Directed Panspermia, than evolution - intentional engineering would be better equipped to produce a functional organism with a minimal gene set, and arrival from elsewhere would explain the absence of any rivals.We must also be aware that Front Loading does not in itself predict a preference for particular proteins found in modern life. There must be some proposed advantage for including the specified genes for the designers. Without that we are in a "the designer likes giraffes" scenario.Also, Front Loading does not predict that the Front Loaders intentions cannot be carried out by some minimal gene set. At least not without constructing hypotheses about their intentions which has not been done. Given that a LUCA with a minimal gene set is more easily obtained by design than by evolution, it seems that the argument at p resent favours non- telic evolution until we come up with hypotheses about what was "Front Loaded" and why. As I state above a simple assumption that particular proteins were favoured, without reason why they were favoured is wholly inadequate.To sum up:1) we have good reason to expect that evolution would not be limited to the genes from a single, minimal gene set. Such a limitation is more easily explained by the Directed Panspermia favoured by the proponents of Front Loading.2) it has not yet been shown that there are any genes with deep homology that are not derived from a minimal gene set.3) at this time there is no plausible hypothesis why the Front Loaders would include extra genes anyway