Innovation and Speciation: whale changes (Evolution)

by David Turell , Wednesday, May 17, 2017, 15:16 (2746 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: I agree that simple adaptations can occur from cellular input, epigenetic changes. It is when you want to jump the fossil gaps that I object logically. The gaps require foresight of the future design and planning. Logical.

dhw: Yet again: We know cells/cell communities can adapt, so maybe instead of your God personally designing every single innovation, lifestyle and natural wonder (in order to produce humans), he also enabled them to design their own. It’s a hypothesis.

A hypothesis without any merit. You are, once again, glossing over the fossil gaps. they require advanced design planning, well beyond the capacity of cells which can arrange for simple adaptation.

dhw: These designs may have been triggered by environmental changes, as opposed to being planned and designed in advance of environmental changes – a scenario which a couple of days ago you said you had never advocated (though your 3.8-billion-year computer programme CAN only precede the environmental changes and surely must at least allow for them) because you are “convinced speciation is separate from environment”.

Environment triggers adaptations, but speciation probably does not relate to environment with evidence we have in relation to the development of H. sapiens.

dhw: Your God’s eight-stage design of the whale therefore apparently had nothing to do with the pre-whale moving from the land environment to the water environment. Does this really make sense to you?

Turn your idea around. Prior speciation changes allowed an early stage to try out the water.

dhw: All you are telling us now is that the whale evolved in eight stages and is part of the bush of life. The answer to how this fits in with the rest of your theory is the above string of “don’t knows”!

DAVID: Have you looked at each stage? Can you explain the gaps? I can't, but what I can do is analyze the need for planning, design and the ability to imagine the changes required in the next form. That requires mental work, doesn't it. Cells logically can't do that, only minor adaptations. The whale plays a large role in the econiches of ocean life.

dhw: so when you say that your explanation is an “overall view” which provides “an overall perspective that fits everything together”, you don’t actually know how your view fits everything together. That is why I question it and offer an alternative view (not dogma, not masquerading as fact, just a hypothesis) which even you agree does fit everything together.

I've explained over and over how it all fits together. It is not my fault that you don't accept the parts.