Innovation and Speciation: aquatic mammals avoid bends (Evolution)

by David Turell , Wednesday, December 02, 2020, 20:10 (1241 days ago) @ dhw

Denton
DAVID: Darwin's theory has never been able to explain our appearance from the point of view of necessary survivability. Our ape cousins prove the point.

dhw: Since bacteria have survived, NO multicellular organism was “necessary”. But multicellular organisms may have improved their chances of survival when and where conditions were proving difficult. This applies to all species, including humans. (In other locations, apes may have had no problem. Or there were too many apes, or one group was more adventurous than another. Plenty of possibilities.)

DAVID: But to relying on survivability, which is an unproven theory.

dhw: There are NO proven theories! Why do you find my explanation unreasonable?

DAVID: Mammals to water is a complication, requiring an enormous change in physiological mechanisms. This does not seem to tell us survival was a issue. You've skipped around the issue that humans were never required, and their appearance is a powerful argument for God as Adler shows.

dhw: It is perfectly logical that mammals entering the water may have been necessitated by a threat to survival. I have answered your second point in my now bolded reply above, except that I have used your word “necessary” instead of your word “required”.

Survival is a theory that has no direct answer, except the huge improbability of of physiological and phenotypical design requirements. Unfortunately for your theory, each fossil in the whale series shows an enormous gap in the requirements. I can't imagine the land mammals jumped into the water at the shoreline and stayed there. Assuming a slow adaptation where are the transitional forms?

Fish to land
dhw: Why your God should have preprogrammed or dabbled every individual muscle-brain-skull arrangement for every individual species when, according to you, all he wanted was us and our food supply, remains a mystery for you to solve. […]

DAVID: I accept what God chose to do. I don't need to know His reasons. Your logical explanations are following a basic establishment of a very human god.

dhw: ... Please stop pretending that your theory is the only possible truth. Your silly “humanizing” objection has been demolished over and over again.

Only in your mind. You don't realize how human you make Him.

Genome complexity
Quote: "In general, cells use similar working mechanisms from a common ancestor. They all learned the same tricks as long as these tricks were useful.'"

DAVID: Cells tricks are quite simple and automatic.

dhw: I’m referring to those that are complex and require intelligence.

DAVID: Even Shapiro doesn't go that far. All He has found is bacteria can edit DNA, and stay the same species.

dhw: How many more times? Shapiro DOES go that far. The fact that his research is on bacteria does not stop him from using the research of his fellow scientists! Here are his conclusions:
SHAPIRO: Cells are built to evolve; they have the ability to alter their hereditary characteristics rapidly through well-described natural genetic engineering and epigenetic processes as well as by cell mergers. […} Evolutionary novelty arises from the production of new cell and multicellular structures as a result of cellular self modification functions and cell fusions.
All quoted by you, p. 142, The Atheist Delusion.

A theoretical proposal based on bacterial editing DNA. No further advances from anyone since his book appeared. An important fact established by Shapiro

Bird beak
QUOTE: "A “sixth sense” feature might have helped carnivorous theropods such as Neovenator find prey by probing their snouts into mud or murky water."

DAVID: If the prey is remote, how does the animal know what it is looking for? Seems it had to be designed for use.

dhw: I would suggest that it doesn’t know what it is looking for but, like the therapods, is “sniffing out” what is available. Only the bird’s beak has the same “sniffability” as the therapods’ snouts.

How does it develop if it doesn't know at first what is out there and what to sense?