Different in degree or kind: Egnor's take (Introduction)

by David Turell , Friday, September 30, 2016, 19:23 (2764 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: For anatomic changes the saltations are results of larger jumps in phenotype. You are again suggesting slight changes in fossils; not found! 
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> dhw:It is you who have said the changes were major, but it makes no difference to the argument. Bearing in mind the fact that we know organisms can respond very swiftly to need by changing their own structure (as in adaptation), it seems to me more likely that the changes resulted from the need for new sounds, to express the expanding range of subject-matter arising from enhanced consciousness, than from your God changing human anatomy tens of thousands of years in advance, and humans later on finding that they could make new sounds, and consequently inventing language. - You are using a false narrative: Epigenetic alterations are minor, not major. I am discussing major jumps in phenotypes. The guppies took two years to change size. That is the brief adaptations you are offering, without phenotypic change of any importance. The changes we are discussing are gaps like H. Erectus to H. habilis to H. Sapiens.
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> dhw: Meanwhile, I do wish you would let me know whether you think your God provided fish with fully formed legs before they stepped out onto dry land, and if not, whether you think fins changed to legs within a single generation. - Here again you are stretching. The transitional forms show large gaps in phenotype in the before and after fossils. - Look at this article on walking fish. Large skeletal changes. Again a gap. - http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2014/01/14/262464764/first-land-walking-fish-loo... 
> dhw: It is indeed a great article, for which many thanks. The author clearly thinks that the origins of modern human culture go back much further than was previously thought. Probably no need to imagine that 200,000 years ago the great brain hung around doing nothing. Simple beginnings, growing complexity - just like language. - The big brain arrived as a tabula rasa and then was developed to its current state by humans learning to use it. Speech is the same. Anatomy first!