Innovation and Speciation: whale changes (Evolution)

by David Turell , Monday, May 22, 2017, 19:38 (2528 days ago) @ dhw

You are now telling me what I keep telling you! Sat. 20 May: “environment change offers new challenges (to survive) and/or new opportunities (to improve, or to complexify).” As above, it is the drive for improvement (your “complexity”) that causes organisms to exploit the new opportunities, i.e. opportunity first, followed by exploitation of opportunity for the sake of improvement (your “complexity”). And if, in your words, environmental change “initiates” speciation, speciation doesn’t precede environmental change.

I don't remember where I said environmental change 'initiates' speciation. My position is specifically environmental change offers an invitation for change but in no way requires it. Chicxulub is a great example. Dinosaurs were destroyed, but the little mammals survived and eventually evolved into the current forms. Before the Cambrian the rise in oxygen allowed for better energy use, but did not require the appearance of new complex species with no precursors.

dhw: You asked us to watch the video, which illustrates how legs, tail, snout and body gradually (in tiny steps) became more and more streamlined for life in the water. However, it doesn’t show the jumps required for reproduction, giving birth and suckling, so why bother with the video in the first place?

I find your statement intellectually dishonest. The video was a very shortened animation of the process, just to illustrate how much bodily change was required. There was the opportunity to see the full process over a 45 minute period. I suggested not doing that since the animation showed the magnitude of the required changes. Tiny steps are an animation, not what happened, and I think you understand that.

dhw: What you are now telling us is that major changes not shown in the video must be saltations. We would need a whale expert to explain the theory, but I have always agreed that saltations must occur in evolution.

The gaps require an acceptance of saltations,, since there are no forms in tiny steps in the fossil record. Definition from Wiki: "abrupt evolutionary change; sudden large-scale mutation". For me only God can do this because of the need for prior design.

dhw: That doesn’t mean they must precede environmental change.

Entering a watery environment is environmental change. Polar bears, seals, etc., do it without changing so far. If you are a swimmer ( I am) and can swim underwater, it is easy to understand the requirements for a mammal who lives a good portion of the time under water. It requires more than seal blubber or bear fur.

dhw:(Before you reply, please see “bacterial intelligence” re planning and hypotheses.) Your hypothesis offers us a 3.8-billion-year programme for each pre-whale saltation, or the male and female lying on the beach with their land-animal legs, tail, snout and genitalia as God dabbles, and…then what? He sends them off into the water - for no reason you can think of - brings them back or does the next dabble while they’re still in the water….one separate dabble after another for the next few million years…can’t do it all in one go…must do it, though, in order to keep life going until he can produce humans?

I love your imagination! I simply take the fossil record for what it is and what it suggests. I accept God in charge. I don't know why He created aquatic mammals which require so many phenotypic changes. Maybe He wanted to explore the challenge of creating them? So we really don't know 'how' He did it but the 'why' He did it is aquatic balance of nature.