MidGe - We had this exchange...

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You make a scientific argument in your first paragraph. On that paragraph --- In considering the evolution of something from A1 to A100 Going from A1 to A2 might require lets say 3 changes in the genetic code. From A2 to A3 another 3 changes ..and so on. Now 6 changes to the genetic code is more than twice as hard as 3. 30 changes are far more than 10 times harder than just 3.


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I was trying to simplify to allow the real issue to come to the fore. You could consider each of a1, a2, a3, etc.. to be intermediate steps. Secondly, even if it was 100 or a thousand, or more times harder, it would not change the argument. In fact, IMO, it would strengthen it.

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1. Of course I'm considering a1,a2 and a3 to be intermediate steps. Thats the whole framework of the discussion.
2. First you said that if we have an evolutionary series A1 to A100 and we observe a few of the steps a1 to a2 to a3 etc - that it makes sense to think the whole series took place. I countered by pointing out - based on huge amounts of data - that going from A1 to A2 is much easier than each succesive step. So the logic that if you observe the easy part, concluding that the hard part must have occured is not necessarily true. Now you are saying that this stengthens your argument if it is 1000 times harder to go from a2 to a3 than it was from a1 to a2. Please explain how this strengthens your argument.