Innovation and Speciation:baleen whale feeding (Evolution)

by David Turell , Thursday, June 22, 2017, 01:03 (2491 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: Advanced planning as in the whale series is ALWAYS required. The changes are too complex for any other method. In the Cambrian new complex species appeared. God planned them also.

dhw: I presume that by “advanced” you mean very complex, which I accept, but why “planning”, which means working out in advance? This must obviously be the case with your God’s amazing 3.8 billion-year-old computer programme for all non-dabbled innovations (not to mention lifestyles and natural wonders), but why do you think it is impossible for his dabbles to take place in response to a change in the environment, as opposed to his planning them in advance? You seem to have accepted that Cambrian speciation took place AFTER the increase in oxygen, so why does he have to plan hominins and whales (and you also insist that he actually implements his plans) BEFORE the forests have given way to plains, or water replaces dry land? Can’t he do his dabbles when the changes occur, without looking into his crystal ball and planning them beforehand?

Because of the gap size in the changes as evolution advances. Eight/nine whale stages are each gigantically different in form and function. You never looks at the size of the gaps in our discussion. Putting your nostrils on top of your head as one blowhole is a giant step. By dabbling I mean small changes, but more than epigenetic adaptations. As for hominins, they have large skeletal changes for bipedalism and a giant jump in brain size with each gap. Requires advanced architectural planning to allow for the phenotypical gaps in form and function.

DAVID: God is in control, no matter what method we think might be used.

dhw: If God exists, of course he will be in control if he wants to be. But according to you, he gives us free will, which means he deliberately cedes control. He could just as easily have ceded control of evolution to organisms by giving them the intelligence to do their own designing – though always with the option of doing a dabble.

Free will is at the mental level, a side issue.. Why drag it in? It doesn't fit. We are discussing God at the evolutionary level of form and function.