More about how evolution works; stasis (Evolution)

by David Turell , Friday, October 16, 2015, 14:44 (3324 days ago) @ dhw


> dhw: Yes, I am challenging your attempt to read God's mind by assuming that he planned everything for the sake of humans - a hypothesis that simply doesn't fit in with the “scattershot” history of evolution. Instead I am suggesting that this history can be explained by the fact that some organisms adapt to changing conditions, others fail and so die out, and others find their own ways of exploiting new conditions and “complexifying", as dictated by their individual ability to master changing conditions, and not by some overriding anthropocentric purpose.-And a large number never advance at all. They don't fit the Darwin proposal of adapt or die, which you are proposing.
 
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> DAVID: Monkeys decided on their own, starting 22-24 million years ago to become human, so over time they did it, from no obvious reasonable challenges from the then existing environment as known to us.
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> dhw: They didn't say to themselves, “I'm gonna make myself human”. But they found new ways of exploiting conditions, just as every single innovation from bacteria onwards must in some way have proceeded from the drive to improvement, as opposed to the need for adaptation. The latter is a response to challenges from the environment, whereas improvement is a response to opportunities offered by the environment.-This is the same response that you made above. It doesn't explain broad evidence of stasis, such as 250 million years of unchanged trilobites or 70 million year-old unchanged coelacanths. To me this is a strong sign of planned advances, such as 22 million years of monkeys to humans and the monkeys still exist unchanged. Why a complexity push only here and there?
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> DAVID: Please see my entry on Koonin.
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> The basis of it all is endosymbiosis. Lynn Margulis was a pioneer in this field, and she believed in the intelligent cell.-And I believe in intelligent information running the cells. I will stick 100% to my side of the 50/50.