exaptations (Introduction)

by dhw, Wednesday, July 17, 2013, 19:12 (4147 days ago) @ David Turell

Dhw: It stands to reason that if there is an intelligent mechanism at work within the genome (and there has to be, even though we can't account for it), and if an innovation survives because it is beneficial, its purpose could be changed if the environment demanded or allowed for change. The only other way the process could possibly work would be if you believed in a god who intervened in order to create every single innovation and adaptation! A totally unnecessary complication even for a theist. -DAVID: Not an unnecessary complication.-So are you saying that God "intervened in order to create every single innovation and adaptation"? How do you think he did it? Did he grab hold of each individual creature and psychokinetically adjust the genome every time he wanted to make a change? I know you can't answer. It's a mystery you're happy to live with. But see the next problem.
 
Your various posts ask the question: "Why keep something that is useless and 'latent' for generations. Why doesn't it disappear?" And "Why did evolution create a disadvantageous larynx, when no need existed at the time?" Until very recently everyone thought "junk DNA" was just that, but now scientists are not so sure. Do you honestly think we KNOW how things worked hundreds of thousands of years ago? Every new find produces new theories. Perhaps you're thinking this will sound like pre-planning. But if, as you have repeatedly told us, God intervenes, why bother with a disadvantageous larynx 500,000 years before he needs it? He could just step in again and dabble. The mixture of laissez-faire and direct intervention constantly leads you to more and more "unnecessary complications". 
 
Gray & Co "hope their research will coax other biologists to think beyond natural selection and to see the possibility that random mutations can fuel the evolution of complexity on its own. "We don't dismiss adaptation at all as part of that," Gray says. "We just don't think it explains everything."-I don't think natural selection and adaptation explain everything either. And I doubt whether random mutations explain anything at all. David, you have provided us with masses of examples that describe the intelligent processes underlying all the organs we know today. Science has shown that cells, microorganisms, plants, our fellow animals communicate, take decisions, cooperate, form communities. There is nothing random in this. No-one has the slightest difficulty understanding that humans adapt and innovate by using their intelligence. So why is it so difficult to imagine that other forms of life have done the same, going right back to the earliest of those forms?