Evolution: whales defy explanation (Evolution)

by dhw, Sunday, August 19, 2018, 10:39 (2077 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: But the fossil show giant changes, not explained by your just-so story.

dhw: There is as yet no universally accepted story of any kind to explain giant changes, but that is no answer to my point that my hypothesis is based mainly on responses to environmental conditions and therefore NOT on foresight. I note that you do not answer my question concerning your God’s “foresight” in relation to the different stages of pre-whale evolution. Dismissing my hypothesis as a just-so story is on the same level as dismissing God as a delusion. Not a level I would wish to stay on.

DAVID: Of course environmental changes will at times be a great influence. The gaps in the fossil story, if real, strongly suggest design, because of the complexity of the required changes. Your theory is highly suggestive of small stepwise alterations leading to the new forms.

Then perhaps you can agree that environmental influences may have occasioned the many changes to the pre-whale – as opposed to your God having prepared the pre-whale for entry into the water. I have no idea how many small steps were needed before any innovation reached its current form, and nor have you. Are you proposing that your God reached down and summoned all the then existing pre-whales to come ashore so that he could equip each of them with a blowhole? All part of his “foresight”, though he didn’t think of it when he first got them to enter the water?