On the biological side of things, a few weeks ago I hit on somethig I thought was pretty interesting although I may ot fully grasp it yet. Back in the nineties I read a book I think was titled Creation Science, which I think was authored by Henry Morries and someone named Gary Partker although I may not have his name right. Whoever he is, and I haven't been able to find out anything about him, or maybe a little but I'm not sure it's hjim, he presented a model of how Adam and Ever could have carried all the genetic material for all the skin color variations known to humanity, which of course means hey carried all the genetic material offor every kind of variation that ever cooccurs to the human race. He drew it up in one of those boxes I think is called a punnet square? I'm not rememberung uch this morning, am I?
But tthat has stuck with me since then and leads me from time to time to think about how variations are built into the genome by simple zygosity, meaning heterosqugosity, meaning the fact that genes that are capable of variation are made up of two alleles or versions of the trait they code for, such that the offspring in sexual recombination can receive one or the other ersion fo the trait. If many genes for a trait combine with different versions of each, there can be a huge range of different ways a trait can vary. This is all based on Mendeian genetics, very simple stuff, bu I've come to realize that it has enormous postential for creating variations.
Some genes no doubt don't produce variations because in the design of the creature they need to be stable, such as gthe body plan or the imune system. But there are all sorts of characteristics that can vafry, the most common one we always think of being eye color. Skin color is another. Hair type and color, and in animals fur tye and so on, all may variy freely and produce all sorts of interesting traits. Birtds may have the most ineresting and colorful variation possibilityies with dramatic plumage possibilities and so on. But it's through variation that you get say, the different herds of wildebeests, that vary in size, hide color and antler shape from herd to herd. In humans we get the races but there are many more fraces than the few we usually think of. If you put ten people on a desert isolaned, or no you can't put them there, if they happened to get there a few centuries ago and couldn't leave, by now they would have a very distinctive look to them due to the combination from generation to generation fo whatever genetic material was in the group that fisrst landed on the island. There could be a huge poulation by now, but they would all have similar characteristics, a generalized look to them, in size for instance as well as facial features and proabably temperament and capabilities of many sorts. It's how we get all our different kinds of cats and dogs etc etc etc. The body plan doesn't alter much so you always know a cat is a cat and a dog a dog, but otherwise they may vary eomrously, dogs from the Great Dane to the St Bernard to the Husky to the spaniel to the chihuahua etc etc etc.
It is these vartiation s that evolutionists mistake for evolution and built their whole system o them. As if the variations could keep changing the creature until it eventually becomes a differentr kind of creature. Can't happebn. For one thing, the body plan doesn't change, only the what to call them appearance is pary of it but there's more to it, I'm sure there's a word for it somewhere. It's variation built into the genome, it's not evolution. When you get a purebrfed of any kind of animal for inatance, no further variation happens, . It took me some time to recognize that this is the piont where the genes for the slaient characgteristics are all or mostly all homozygouds for particular traits. In fact somewhere I foudn that that is a defintiion of a pure breed according to some breeding organization. Homozygodisity is the same as a fixed trait. If the whole population is homozygous for particular traits, there is no opportunity for variation of that trait to be expressed in theiur offspring. YOu have to have heterozygosity for that to be possible, but all the alleles for the trait that do not produce the varsion that belongs to the particular breed ahhave been eliminated from the population over time and unless there's a stray one here or there thevariations of that btrait juist aren't going to show up again in that breed. So calle "evlution" has come to an end that that point.
So I began to appreciate that the mdel of genetic possibilities in Adam and Ever I'd found in that book back in the ineties is a model of heterozygosity in all the genetic matieral that is capable of variation in the genome. Heterozygosity, or the simple fact that each gene has two different versions of the trait it codes for, is all it takes to produce all possible variations in any creature, including human beings. as they reproduce generation after generation. When a particular breed sis being develoeped by domestic breeding, or intentional breeding, or when a small population gets accidentally isolted in the wild from the parrent population and breeds only with its own members over many generations, that's when you start to get more homoszygosity connected with particualr traits within the new breed or popualtion.
jI know this is oversimpliefied and there are other actors to gtake into account, such as epigenetic inflence no doubt, though I don't see how that would inlufnece this particular situation, but generally this simple Mendelian sstem should be able to account for enojrmous variatiey in living things. A very simple design producing a lot of effects over the generations.
So when the topic came up on the Let's Talk Creation podcast of how the llama came out of the camel, if it did, and that was one of the questions, igt occurred to me that this Mendelian principle could very well explain it. You wouldn't need both a camel and a llama on the ark if they are related woto each other as they are, and would wouldn't need a generalized "camellama" either that somehow contianed the genrteic material for both animals and didn't look eaxactly like either one of them. It occured gto me that if the camel type has the dominant allele for most of its genes that produce its salient traits, that would mean that three our of four offspring would get the came type inheritance, which is a Mendelian statistic. The camel thype would show up in the heterozygous genetic formula, as well as in the homozygous dominant formula, two heterozygous possibilities and one homosyfou, for all the traits that make the camel the camle. Whih would no doubt be a huge number of traits and genes for those traits. But if a small portion of the population of camels got separated from it that just happeneed to contain a lot of the recessive forms of those genes, then as that new poup;lation inbred over the gwnerations it could well develop into the llama type or any other varsion of the camel . All it takes, I was thining, is the common accidnet of isolaution of a small number of animals with a new gset of gene frequencies that favor the recessive version of most of the generaes for tthe salient characteristics that in the camel type are built on the dominant alleles. I hope I'm getting this said clearly.
So, no Camellamas needed, just heterozygosity in the genome which is a very flexible design factor we usually don't appreciate as such.
