Innovation and Speciation: whale changes (Evolution)

by dhw, Saturday, May 20, 2017, 09:02 (2533 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: … Do you now believe that your God embarked on an eight-stage design of the pre-whale to allow it to enter a new environment? If so, do you still believe there is no link between speciation and the environment?
DAVID: God managed the whale change from land to sea. Darwin-style evolution can't do it. Speciation first to allow this transfer of living environment.

We are not discussing Darwin. So you are now abandoning your claim that “speciation is separate from environment”, and that you “don’t look at animals’ structural changes and environmental shifts as occurring in any special order”. Today God apparently designs speciation before the change of environment. Just clarifying.

DAVID: Since I believe that God created species my theories all fit together.
dhw: And yet you do not know why your God made the pre-whale enter the water, why he designed it in eight stages, or why he wanted to design it in the first place although his one and only purpose was to design human beings. And it’s not just species: you keep insisting that he also designed all the lifestyles and natural wonders, although his one and only purpose...etc. I’d better just repeat that we all know life requires energy, but as you have agreed many times, that is irrelevant to the main focus of your theory, which is that your God’s one and only purpose…etc., and everything else was related to that. And THAT is the theory that has you changing your mind day by day.
DAVID: In looking at the bush of life, I've consistently given you the answer you fully know: energy for life to continue until humans are evolved.

I anticipated this non-explanation for God’s personal design of every lifestyle and natural wonder extant and extinct for the sake of humans, and have restored it in bold.

dhw: God is/is not in total control; experimentation is/is not “off the reservation”; speciation is/is not connected with environmental change…If only you would modify your dogma to accommodate the POSSIBILITY that your God did NOT design everything, and/or did NOT gear the WHOLE of evolution to the SOLE purpose of creating humans, you wouldn’t get into this mess!
DAVID: Your mess, not mine. Accept God and it all makes sense. God is in control, either with dabbles or not, with experimentation or not. We cannot know those details.

It is not a matter of accepting God but of accepting your insistence that all species, lifestyles and natural wonders were specially designed by God, and he designed them for the sake of humans. That, once again, is the theory that has you changing your mind from one day to the next.

DAVID: My guess is most speciation is a drive to complexity, not environmental change. Recognize that statement from years ago? My basic thoughts at all consistent.

And for years your drive to complexity has been my drive to improvement. This is not a substitute for environmental change – they go together, the suggestion being that environmental change offers new challenges (to survive) and/or new opportunities (to improve, or to complexify). It is a possible explanation of what triggered the Cambrian. I don't know why the whale, which you hold up as a shining example of your God's work, would have moved from land to water if it hadn't involved some kind of improvement, but in any case it provides a shining example of the interconnection between speciation and the environment.