Extinctions: Massive eruptions (Introduction)

by David Turell , Saturday, August 27, 2016, 21:47 (2801 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: However, I take Raup's point and yours: it's bad luck either way on the organisms slaughtered either by chance or by God's choice. Not sure how such a comment helps us understand the process of evolution, though.-Getting rid of the old allows for new species to develop,i.e., dinosaurs, no more.-> dhw: If we believe in common descent, evolution only shows us that humans descended from apes, just as every other organism descended from preceding organisms. Or are you telling us that there was a strong drive for earlier organisms to produce weaverbirds, elephants and duckbilled platypuses?-The only strong drive I see is for humans. See today, convoluted human evolution entry.
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> DAVID: Their physical and mental capacities are different in kind from apes, and in this portion of known evolutionary history extinctions played no role unless one looks back 60+ million years ago to Chicxulub and goodbye dinos. 
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> dhw: So if they are different in kind, how does that make them predictable?-I'm looking retrospectively at how we appeared.