Evolution of Language (General)

by David Turell , Saturday, November 02, 2019, 19:48 (1637 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: You are skipping over my point that the needs of a new species have to be anticipated in planning for the design of the species. The designer had to know in advance ears were necessary for the moth's like style. If moths had arrived without ears and couldn't pick up evidence of predators, they would not have survived. Survival needs have to be planned in advance. Species appear abruptly after gaps, no time given for modifications, remember Gould's point.

dhw: I have repeatedly answered this point on this thread and elsewhere! If you accept common descent, then moths with ears did not appear out of the blue – moths with ears descended from pre-moths without ears, just as whales descended from pre-whales without flippers.

And what we are arguing is how did the adaptations happen. Speciation is a black box. You want the nebulous idea of cell committees with the ability to design. I know only minds design.

dhw: We do not know why pre-moths took to nocturnal life, or why pre-whales took to marine life, but in both cases their adaptation to new conditions required the changes which ultimately led to speciation*** (see below for a perfect example). We are lucky enough to have evidence of transitional forms in the history of the whale. Survival does not have to be “planned in advance”. When conditions change, either existing species find new ways of coping with the changes, or they do NOT survive (= natural selection).

Of course they must adapt or die. That statement proves nothing. We are arguing the point of how adaptation to new species occurs. It requires design. In our experience only minds design.

dhw : No doubt many pre-eared moths did NOT survive either. That was why ears became necessary. Pure common sense, illustrated millions of times over by the history of life. No need for your “magic” - though highly selective (because most species have died out) - crystal ball process which you are so fixated on.

Total non sequitur! Of course ears became necessary. The issue between us remains. How did that happen? Moths with ears are a slightly different new species, which requires design. Your answer for speciation is not my answer. As you have kindly noted my 'Atheist Delusion' book is a very strong argument for design.

***DAVID (under “echolocation”): A very clever adaptation using land-based air breathing. Note the illustrated mechanism diagram. Another complex adaptation which makes me wonder, why bother to enter the water.

dhw: A perfect example of how organisms adapt to new conditions and thereby become new species. You don’t have to have a reverse crystal ball to guess that both pre-moths without ears and pre-whales without echolocation may have hunted by night/entered the water because by doing so they improved their chances of survival (e.g. by escaping from predators, or by gaining access to more plentiful food.)

Of course the adaptations had to happen to allow survival. Stating a truism still gives us no answer for the mechanism as to how the adaptations occurred in a new species. This is the point you totally miss by simply saying it had to happen! Of course it did. We each have a theory. Your's is a nebulous idea that cell committees have the ability to design complex changes. Only a mind can design; at least this is what we know at our human level.

DAVID (summarizing the article on “bacterial gut role”): ): Bacteria help us but they are not us.

dhw: No, they are not us, but they form part of the individual community which IS us, and they typify the way evolution works: cells and cell communities cooperate, and they all seem to know what they’re doing. So maybe they do know what they’re doing.

DAVID: Your interpretation is from the outside of any organism. Significance is that everything looks designed, so by your lights, 'maybe' it is designed. Dawkins says we must ignore that obvious point.

dhw: I keep agreeing that it IS designed! And my proposal is that the cells/bacteria do their own designing, and the theistic version of this theory is that your God designed the mechanisms that enable the cells/bacteria to do their own designing. We are not discussing Dawkins any more than we are discussing Darwin.

We are discussing design, and Dawkins is on point. Design is so obvious he must warn us not to get sucked in. As for bacteria, they are not us but they are extremely helpful to us. No need to wonder why they survived from the beginning. God could have evolved away from them, but they started life and God purposely kept them around to help us. God has lots of interim purposes, which you constantly tell me are illogical, such as a bush of life for energy so evolution of life has the energy to cover the time involved to finally reach our evolution, as history shows. You are so Darwinist you keep telling us necessity explains the species adaptations, and conjure up cell committees as the originating source of the new designs. Only minds design.