Innovation and Speciation: aquatic mammals avoid bends (Evolution)

by dhw, Friday, December 04, 2020, 12:52 (1240 days ago) @ David Turell

Denton
dhw: We agree that Darwin was wrong when he said that Nature doesn’t make jumps. But what I propose (theistic version) is that instead of your God preprogramming or dabbling the jumps, he gave cell communities the intelligence to work them out for themselves. None of this in any way disproves the proposal that speciation (including that of humans) may be the result of organisms improving their chances of survival when faced with new conditions. These may be local as well as global.

DAVID: All of this are reasonable suppositions, but not an explanation of the complexity of the designs produced by cell committees.

What do you mean? There are three theistic explanations on offer: God preprogrammed or dabbled them all, and your God designed an autonomous mechanism that designed them all. Thank you for accepting the feasibility of the survival theory.

Genome complexity
DAVID: Even Shapiro doesn't go that far. All He has found is bacteria can edit DNA, and stay the same species.

dhw: How many more times? Shapiro DOES go that far. The fact that his research is on bacteria does not stop him from using the research of his fellow scientists! Here are his conclusions:

SHAPIRO: Cells are built to evolve; they have the ability to alter their hereditary characteristics rapidly through well-described natural genetic engineering and epigenetic processes as well as by cell mergers. […} Evolutionary novelty arises from the production of new cell and multicellular structures as a result of cellular self modification functions and cell fusions.
All quoted by you, p. 142, The Atheist Delusion.

DAVID: A theoretical proposal based on bacterial editing DNA.

dhw: Do you really think he didn’t incorporate the research of his fellow scientists?

DAVID: All of his theory is in the context of Darwinian evolution, which struggles to remain consistent with itself.

Now that you’ve dropped your absurd idea that Shapiro only deals with bacteria, would you please tell me what is “inconsistent” about his theory as quoted by you.

DAVID: No further advances from anyone since his book appeared.

dhw: What advances do you expect? He has formulated his theory. Maybe one day, scientists will see cells producing innovations. Maybe one day, according to you, scientists will discover God’s book of instructions for all life forms, econiches, strategies and natural wonders in the history of life.

DAVID: Exactly.

So why do you try to discredit his theory when your own theory is open to the same objection?

Bird beak
QUOTE: "A “sixth sense” feature might have helped carnivorous theropods such as Neovenator find prey by probing their snouts into mud or murky water."

DAVID: If the prey is remote, how does the animal know what it is looking for? Seems it had to be designed for use.

dhw: I would suggest that it doesn’t know what it is looking for but, like the therapods, is “sniffing out” what is available. Only the bird’s beak has the same “sniffability” as the therapods’ snouts.

DAVID: How does it develop if it doesn't know at first what is out there and what to sense?

dhw: Now you’re asking how an organism knows what to eat and how to go and get it. Maybe Mummy and Daddy gave it a few lessons. And maybe great-great-great grandma and grandpa learned from experience.

DAVID: And I think the sniffing organ was designed.

You asked how the bird knew what to look for, and I gave you an answer. If you think your God preprogrammed the sniffing beak 3.8 billion years ago, or stepped in to perform an operation on each beak "as part of the goal of evolving [= directly designing] humans", so be it.

Aquatic mammals
DAVID: These are intense physiological and phenotypical alterations. It always raises the observation, why if survival as a mammal is so complex why did mammals enter an aquatic life? Unless there is great stress for survival it is a very difficult path to follow. Migration to a better spot is more sensible and practical.

Maybe they reckoned it was worth exploring the known waters rather than wandering off to who knows what? Anyway, why didn’t your God tell the mammals to migrate, instead of stepping in to operate on their legs before they entered the water? Much simpler. Or do you think he HAD TO send them into the water because otherwise he couldn’t have designed humans and their food supplies a few million years later?