Interestingly enough, dyed in the wool chance worshippers apply theories of chance even when it means denying things that make perfect sense in light of common descent.
Case in point is Nick Matzke’s article on Panda’s Thumb entitled You *can* teach an old dog new tricks. In it he expresses amazement at how a dog cancer cell evidently acquired the *new* capability of becoming a free living parasite able to move from dog to dog.
I corrected this boneheaded shallow thinking in comments under the name “Spravid Dinger” (thanks Dohn Javison, coming from you I take it as a compliment and use the name proudly)  to which Andrea Bottaro replied for a few rounds. Naturally as soon as some genius figured out Spravid Dinger was David Springer all my comments were deleted as well as Andrea Bottaro’s responses. I suspect it was done upon orders from Esley Welsberry. At any rate, I’m going to take this opportunity to fix the record by making this article trackback to Nick’s. Let’s see if the Pandas are censoring our trackbacks this week.
What I told Nick was two basic facts related to the dog cancer cells which derive from a belief in common descent (a belief I hold). First of all, tumor cells are (generally) cells which have had the more recently ***evolved mechanism of apoptosis turned off. They have in fact reverted to their ancient ability to be immortal by not having any restriction on how many times they can divide into two daughter cells. So in the case of tumor cells multiplying out of control it’s nothing new but rather it’s something very old.   As biologists I’m sure Nick and Andrea have a good understanding of that. What amazed me was that they didn’t immediately apply this same thinking to the cancer cell turning into a free living cell.  The ability of the cell to live independently (at least long enough to move from one dog to another) is an ancient capability from the days when the cell line in question wasn’t a dog cell but was a free living single celled common ancestor to the dog. It then isn’t an old dog learning a new trick but rather an old dog recalling an old trick. The cell had reverted from its more recently evolved to multicellular existence to a more ancient method of single cell existence. Andrea Bottaro’s final comment (before the purge) expressed extreme amazement over the seemingly instantaneous evolution of dog tumor cell to infectious pathogen cell. My final jibe was to say it sounded like he’d become a believer in saltation and to not let Dohn Javison know or he’d never hear the end of it. I guess pointing out to Andrea that he was talking like the internet’s most (in)famous anti-darwinian saltationist was the straw that broke the camel’s back. In the words of Dear Dohn… I Love It So!
***When I say “evolve” I usually mean it in the same sense that a single human egg cell can “evolve” over time into skin cells and muscle cells and neurons and whatnot organized into a mature human being. I believe the best explanation for organic evolution on this planet is that it came from what I term a phylogenetic stem cell. Where this cell came from is anyone’s guess but I believe the best explanation for that was that it was designed by an intelligent agency of some sort for the express purpose of spawning intelligent life on lifeless young planets. Little in macro-evolution makes sense except in the light of a universal common ancestor that was a front-loaded, intelligently designed, phylogenetic stem cell.