Innovation and Speciation: whale changes (Evolution)

by David Turell , Saturday, May 13, 2017, 15:02 (2533 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: As usual you've skipped the entire point. A land animal goes through eight or nine stages to become an aquatic animal hugely complicating all aspects of its phenotype with gaps between the stages, not tiny steps. For example, sex requires a specialized vagina, suckling milk with specialized adaptation. I was not supporting the tiresome quoted Darwinism. Difficult transitions require advanced mental planning with an imagination of the future requirements.

dhw: Your “entire point” is that ALL species, lifestyles and natural wonders – including whales, weaverbirds’ nests, monarch butterflies’ metamorphoses and migration – required advance planning by your God in order to supply the energy to keep life going until he designed the one thing he wanted to design, which was humans. But I know you prefer to separate all these elements of your “entire point”, because taken together they don’t make much sense.

I sorry you don't see the 'sense'. It would make no sense if all God produced was humans.

dhw:You have now added the hypothesis that whenever environmental change was involved, your God changed the structures before changing the environment. And so fish were fully equipped before they stepped onto the land, and the monarch was fully equipped and instructed before God changed the climate and forced it to emigrate.

I don't look at animal's structural changes and environmental shifts as occurring in any special order. I view changes in species as purposeful, and think Darwin's view of struggle for survivability as a minor point.

dhw: However, this doesn’t quite fit in with the pre-whale, which apparently took to the water and needed a succession of dabbles before God got what he wanted (faulty programming perhaps, or experimenting, or making mistakes, or forgetting certain bits and pieces?),

We have no idea why a land animal decided to go into an aquatic environment with all the biologic complications associated with it. It must be God's guidance.

dhw: There is no denying the complexity of the adaptations you have mentioned, but there is no logic to link the above collection of disjointed “guesses” you have made to explain the process.

I haven't been disjointed in demonstrating the complexity of this animal's evolution. It requires God's planning. Why He wanted whales is beyond my reasoning. Certainly not just for whale oil lamps before electricity. In Japan I had whale steak. Delicious, but I don't want them hunted any longer.