Evolution: a different view (Introduction)

by dhw, Thursday, April 30, 2015, 21:06 (3277 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: I interpret him as asking whether we should reinterpret our entire approach to evolution, and conceptualize it differently. As DNA studies in various species suggest, evolution may not be strictly a tree of common descent, and morphology alone is not a good classification method. Simon-Morris looks to convergences, Tattersall to exaptation. All reasonable views. There is something that drives living organisms to produce such a strange bush, and we really don't have answers, but lots of just-so stories to support Darwin. Ma, and makes no sense to me and if folks were truly intellectually honest, there is no one with an explanation.-Agreed, but that doesn't stop us from trying. I don't see convergence or exaptation as complete answers but as part of the answer. The strange bush can be explained by organisms having the ability to work out their own responses to changing environments. Convergence just means different organisms find the same solutions, and exaptations would also be inventive adjustments to existing organs. (See also under "Evolution v Creationism"). Your own just-so story in support of Darwin (you believe in common descent) is preprogramming and/or dabbling by some unknown and unknowable intelligence.-dhw: Once again, this shows that evolution proceeds on its own merry way, with organisms branching off in different directions according to their needs under whatever conditions exist at the time. Innovations, extinctions, sponges, ctenophores, whales, weaverbirds...and all for the sake of humans? The conclusion is a devastating counter to the theory that everything has been planned with one aim in mind. 
DAVID: I still maintain there is no evolutionary pressure/reason for us to be here. Our cousins the great apes, did just fine until Africa over-populated. They would still be fine in their un-advanced state, if we'd leave them to their own devices.-I wonder what the evolutionary pressure/reason was for the 99% of extinct species, for the whale, for the weaverbird, and for the duck-billed platypus.-dhw The absence of any “orderly, stepwise progression” is a clear indication that no matter whether God started it all off or not, living organisms make their own history as they cope (or fail to cope) with an ever changing world.
DAVID: Still doesn't explain why the whales took off to be aquatic mammals, a very complex and complicated tangent to evolution. Following your lead in suppositions, perhaps God is like an orchestra conductor/ composer and waves His baton over a cacophony of evolutionary tangential thrusts, laughing all the time.

He doesn't have to wave a baton or laugh. The existence and survival of whales is proof enough that whatever transformations took place were beneficial. On the understanding that all evolutionary change is triggered by the need to survive or the aim to improve, this only becomes a problem if you try to fit it in with your anthropocentrism.