Why do we have genes for making egg yolk?
Some Atheists will use the argument “why would God create us with a useless egg yolk making gene?”
(See Loss Of Egg Yolk Genes In Mammals And The Origin Of Lactation And Placentation.)
Another good question is why do we have genes that hinder our sense of smell? If we had certain genes turned on we could smell as well as a dog can.
From a theological view, I think these are easy questions to answer. The Bible says that because Adam and Eve sinned we now live in a fallen world. We have shorter life spans and experience painful childbirths.
Maybe God created painful childbirths by disabling a series of genes that includes the egg yolk producing gene. Maybe we have shorter life spans because God disabled the GULO gene that allows us to produce vitamin C.
I think a good explanation of disabled genes is that a designer disabled them. I also think that this explanation is more useful. If we take the line that the gene was disabled on purpose by a designer then we can start to figure out why the designer disabled it and what problems we’ll see because of it. Then we can start to develop ways to work around that disabled gene.
Back to the genes that would improve our sense of smell. If a designer didn’t disable them then how could that disabled gene propigate throughout an entire population? If a mutation or copy error disabled the gene then wouldn’t we expect to see people with these genes enabled?
So God disabled the vitamin C gene for humans and chimpanzee’s?
Did chimpanzee’s sin too?
Actually, it makes more sense that childbirth is painful due to the increased size of the human skull as a result of evolution.
@Bonni J
I think the question really is, why would chimps and Humans both have the gene disabled, but not all Monkeys? Why Guinea-Pigs and Fruit Bats but not all species in their lineages?
Maybe God used a retro-virus (much like human designers use to make genetically modified foods) to modify the genome and used foods as a transport agent? Maybe the Chimp/Human/Guinea-Pig is caused by a common food source? If that’s the case we could get lucky and find a common retro virus in the genome.