Chimps \'r\' not us: the role of gene enhancers (Introduction)

by dhw, Sunday, February 04, 2018, 10:54 (2279 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: We are not talking about the tautology of survival of the fittest, but yes, we are talking about what drives evolution. According to you, survivability is a “minor evolutionary issue” and “of no issue to the Homo branch”. And yet you keep telling us that prior to 30,000 years ago, every development both human and non-human was motivated solely by the quest for survival, and you even ask why sapiens hung around for 270,000 years without advancing beyond survivability. Knocking Darwin does not get you out of the logical hole you have dug for yourself. If survival was the only motive behind evolutionary advances until 30,000 years ago, survivability (which includes improving chances of survival) could not have been a minor issue or a non-issue.

DAVID: You still don't see that you are talking about individual survival. When sapiens arrived they had the total capacity to easily survive and create civilization. I questioned the delay for using their capacity as an answer to your 'push' theory about big brains, nothing more. It took 270,000 years for sapiens to discover their real capbilities. That is simply the history of our species. My point still remains. We evolved way beyond any needs for simple survivability, which makes us special.

You leap from one subject to another! Survival means the continued existence of individual organisms. You can’t have life without individual organisms that are alive. You dismissed survivability as an evolutionary driving force, and that totally contradicts everything you have said about evolution up to 30,000 years ago, during which time you say survivability was the ONLY issue. Your purpose was to knock Darwin, though in fact you supported him. Now you lurch back to the 270,000 year “gap”, which I have suggested is due to the fact that it requires very clever individuals of ALL species to come up with innovative ideas. Erectus hung around for one or two million years without making any progress beyond survivability. (And you can’t tell me why your God let him hang around that long before at last producing the one brain he really wanted to produce.) And now, as your grand finale, you switch the whole argument to our being special. Yes, we are special. That doesn’t make us the be-all and end-all of life on Earth. Nor does it prove that survivability is a minor issue, or no issue at all. Nor does it explain why your God took billions of years to produce the one thing he wanted to produce. And the 270,000 year gap is a non-issue. See also my post on “multicellularity” for what drives evolution.