Evolution: more gaps in foraminifera (Evolution)

by David Turell , Friday, October 26, 2018, 15:24 (2003 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: Subject not changed if the discussion is viewed in totality. Our brain is demonstrably beyond any need to drive its appearance. It is you who constantly revert to stresses and environmental changes as causing evolution, while I think it is planned. Environment plays a small role, if any to explain whales, bats, etc.

dhw: And etc. etc. etc. Nobody knows the causes of speciation, and that includes the causes that led to humans descending from tree-dwelling apes. But the idea that environmental change drove our ancestors to climb down from (possibly disappearing) trees, to adopt bipedalism and to exercise and thereby develop their brains in devising new ways to improve their chances of survival seems to me every bit as plausible as the idea that your God preprogrammed the process 3.8 billion years ago, or popped in to fiddle with their anatomy before they climbed down, and fiddled with their brains so that they could think up new strategies and, in due course, extend their thoughts to matters beyond their immediate needs.

DAVID: If other primates stayed in the trees and survive happily to this day, it is very difficult to see why a few dropped to the ground and they had to invent, or be helped by God, the complexities that are human beings. I obviously view the whole process totally differently than you.

dhw: We are theorizing. There must have been a beginning. It is perfectly possible that in one location, the primates could not stay in the trees, whereas in other locations they could. So you have one group of primates forced to develop a new way of life, while the rest carry on as before. Just as some land-dwelling organisms took up marine life, and some sea-dwelling organisms took up land life, always depending on local conditions. Why do you find this less logical than your God preparing one group of primates/land-dwelling/sea-dwelling organisms for life in conditions that don’t yet exist? (See "big brain birth canal" for more details.)

As usual you are blithely ignoring the complex design changes in phenotype that are required, as the animal leaves land, and miraculously grows fins. Or drops out of the trees and is suddenly bipedal. Actually Lucy was both tree and ground capable, a true transition form, but even at that her differences from apes is enormous. the usual gap that requires design and a designer.