End of Mysteries, this was answered 150 years ago.
It is a 3 year degree in itself, but you know the answer already… if you sincerely want to know, I have taken time from my exam study to explain….
Firstly, I did answer that question 'how did it come to be' as that was relevant to the OP. Your new question of is based on a huge misconception, you would probably reach this class about 8 weeks in, just to give you a perspective.
There is no blueprint for a butterfly, for a human, for a rhino, for a tree. We have DNA evolution mapped out from bacteria to modern time. We can see each progressive development.
If you don't believe science or this seems confusing as it did to me before I studied it, again let me briefly explain.So abiogenesis explains the formation of basic chemicals into the first living cell. Evolution maps the development from that first living cell to the animals we have today. Guess what, you are in luck, we have done that now. But because you asked the question, specifically, you mentioned the blueprint, you don’t understand the reality of who and what we are where we came from and where we are going.
Ignore the bible or atheist debate, ignore whether you believe in evolution or not. This is the facts.
When we dig down in the ground, we go further back in time.The furthest layer down where we find life, we fins ONE cell organism, below that, no life at all. Above the singe cell depth, we find multicellular organisms. Millions of years (higher up we dig) later we start to see multi-celled organisms form basic sponge and coral etc. We keep digging up and all of life slowly, slowly gets more and more complex. You NEVER find complex animals like say rabbits in the single cell layers for example and you won’t find extinct animals in layers above the time they died.
(Layers, time period and examples of organism development)
This led to us finding billions of fossils at different times on earths planet. You never find a human below the layer we know humans evolved, you don’t find dinosaurs above the layer they died out at and the changes between layers of time are tiny changes. Darwin saw this and said hang on, did those animals that look like rabbits but bigger and with longer legs and bigger jaws become rabbits or did god kill them off and make rabbits of today.Then he asked your question End of Mysteries... What is a rabbit? I.e. What is the blueprint of a rabbit? If rabbits have existed 3 million years and have changed hugely from year one of 'rabbit' to year 3 million, there is no blueprint, it is constantly adapting.
He then asked, what could power that process?
He noticed that dog breeders and bird breeders could mimic the changes seen in fossils by SELECTIVE breeding, HUMAN SELECTION, if you want a dog with a short nose, breed two short nosed dogs. Within 3 generations you have a wildly different looking dog. Darwin recognised that with millions of years, animals could change vastly, but if humans didnt do the selection what did? He then realised after a trip around the world, specifically at the Galapagos islands. With animals, the land and weather and environment was selecting which genes survived, he called it NATUTAL SELECTION. A human selected two short nosed dogs to make DNA with a very short nose, well, in Galapagos the birds beak lengths were dependant on where the food was for that bird. There were finches on separate islands, the ones with food hidden in deep trees had longer beaks than the ones with food freely about. The finches who had to eat hard material had stronger beaks.
That is what Darwin wrote about. This is evolution (small changes over time) by natural selection (the enviroment dictating the changes).
But this obviously is not the DNA we are talking about and they didn't understand DNA then, or that it existed. DNA is passed from generation to generation, it makes mistakes every time, tiny ones, but they can have a large impact. If that mistake is useful, for example a long beak, you will survive better, breed more and that gene will dominate the new population. This was the theory, BUT now we can look at our DNA, as you can imagine, for people who believed in evolution from the fossil record and observable evolution of bacteria, viruses, fly's etc alone, they could make predictions. If we WERE evolving in this manner, we would see it in our DNA.
We do, our ancestors DNA is in our DNA even the interactions with bacteria and viruses (colds and flu) that our ancestors dealt with are in it. Also we no know all the processes that lead to the mistakes and selection of the genes in the DNA.
So that is how our DNA changes over time. It is called Evolution and this is what Darwin wrote. Go read ‘origin of species’ or a textbook. Now maybe you can answer your own question about a blueprint.
Think of a human and all our human ancestors, from the earliest mammal to humans today. Or if that is too much, from the homo erectus to humans today. Every stage we developed over time, there is no blueprint for our DNA. In a thousand years our DNA will be different to what it is now.
I ‘ll end with an example.
If you get a certain tiny mistake in your DNA your red blood cells, instead of being round are crescent moon shaped. It leads to people living fewer years and in some discomfort. But this is a real phenomenon, its called “sickle cell disease.”
Sickle cell, though disruptive, makes you less prone to malaria, as the malaria pathogen struggles to latch on to the sickle shaped cells. As natural selection would dictate, in regions of the world full of malaria (East Africa) the sickle cell gene is wildly proliferative and dominates the local gene pool because these people live longers, survive and procreate. Natural selection in action!
But lets carry on with the idea of the blueprint , to see why we dont have one.....
So, in 2014, you could say that a ‘normal’ , the majority of humans have a round red blood cell. Lets say in 2015 the environment changes, that malaria is rife and kills most of the world. By 2030 the majority of humans have...... sickle cell shaped blood cells. So what is the blueprint DNA ? The one before or after the sickle cell mutation? Being human we like to think it is OUR dna right NOW. But we know it was different to now, in our past too. This is why it is incorrect to say there is a ‘blueprint’ because animals, organisms, are constantly adapting and evolving to the environment.The DNA of early humans was wildly different to humans today.
So abiogenesis, the formation of DNA and the first cell
Evolution, the development of that cell into what we see today.
That is the very BASIC of what we have discovered and know. If you studied it you would see we know this pathway in great detail, hence we can now manipulate genes etc and make a living cell from scratch.
But we long ago, 150 years ago answered your question end of mysteries. Most people in the world know this stuff, that’s the most embarrassing thing. Being JW's we were fed lot of outdated, minority opinions that fitted in with the narrative of Watchtower.
You dont have to believe any of this but this is where science is and what it is doing.
As for our question in regards to your mum, hopefully this explained it. Like I said, this isnt forum debate, these are topics that take 5 years of high school, 2 years of highe education, 3 years of a degree, two years of a masters....before you can then start a PHD in an area and become an expert in that very specific field, that is if you do and pass your year long PHD.
