Monarchs in captivity do not migrate (Introduction)

by dhw, Saturday, June 29, 2019, 10:17 (1773 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Have you forgotten that evolution requires speciation? This is simply adaptation.

dhw: Adaptation is not simple, but speciation is the great mystery of evolution which nobody has yet solved. My proposal is that the SAME mechanism responsible for adaptation is also responsible for innovation, and hence speciation. If cell communities are able to change their structures or behaviour in order to meet the requirements of new conditions, perhaps (it is a hypothesis) they are also able to exploit new conditions through innovation – but we cannot always draw a clear borderline between adaptation and innovation, as for instance with pre-whale legs that turn into flippers.

DAVID: I see a sharp demarcation most of time between adaptation, such as in monarchs in the same body form change an instinctual activity as migration, and marked change in form as in the whale.

dhw: But do you believe that flippers were a totally new invention, or do you believe that pre-whale legs turned into flippers when pre-whales adapted to life in the water?

DAVID: Flippers were a major reformation of a body part, requiring design to adapt to newly requirements for different movement in water rather than on land.

Thank you for confirming what I wrote above. A major reformation of an existing body part is not an innovation (totally new invention) but an adaptation, and I agree that this adaptation requires design, and as you know, I propose that the designing mechanism is the (perhaps God-given) autonomous intelligence of the pre-whale’s cell communities.

DAVID (Under “triple symbiosis”): Once again it is difficult to understand how chance evolution could create this scenario. How did the slug learn to detoxify the poisons in the first place? And the algae had the same problem when they got together with the bacterium.

An obvious answer is that all these organisms have their own form of intelligence. I find it hard to believe that your God, whose only purpose was to specially design H. sapiens, would have personally dabbled this symbiosis, or would have preprogrammed the very first cells to pass the information on to slugs and algae and bacteria.

DAVID (Under “Bacterial motors”): These studies raise the issue of just how complex was original life if it started with so-called simple bacteria. Perhaps not so simple and required a designer.

Of course they are not simple, and I agree that their complexity provides a strong case for design. Many scientists believe that bacteria are intelligent beings in their own right, and not just simple automatons obeying instructions.