Posted: May 09, 2012 1:07 pm
by halucigenia
asyncritus wrote:Please begin your statements with something like:

The XYZ behaviour in the (name of organism) originated thus...

The XYZ behaviour in the (name of organism) entered the genome thus...

If you can see your way to doing this, it will assist me considerably in evaluating the quality of your evidence/whatever.

Async, no one here is going to fall for your loaded questions. :roll:

The correct answer to your "questions" has already been given several times :-

Firstly, behaviour did not originate before entering into the genome - this is your strawman.
You are still conflating instinctual behaviour with learned behaviour.
No one except your own strawman augments proposes that learned behaviour becomes instinctual behaviour. Instinctual behaviour is by definition not learned behaviour. Therefore it does not have to miraculously enter the genome thusly, as it has to do if you own scenario of actual miraculous creation of instincts were required.
Organisms have always had instinctual behaviours, they are simply reactions to the environment, one of the age old qualifying attributes of the definition of living things is the ability to react to their environment. Instinctual behaviour is genetic and like any genetic trait is modifiable by mutation, natural selection and genetic drift. Thus, from the very beginning of life organisms have had the ability to adapt their behaviours to the environmental conditions in which they find themselves. So at no point does behaviour have to originate and then enter the genome.

That is the answer to your "questions".

Of course it is entirely possible to speculate and provide evidence for how specific instinctual behaviours like the ones you example have developed through time with changing environmental pressures, which is what others have been trying to do, but until you recognise the above as an possible answer to your “questions” I can see that you are never going to understand these explanations.

Now, it would be good of you to actually acknowledge this as a possible answer and provide any rational arguments to it (not that I will be holding my breath).