Innovation and Speciation: whale changes (Evolution)

by David Turell , Saturday, May 20, 2017, 15:30 (2743 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: Today God apparently designs speciation before the change of environment. Just clarifying.

All I am proposing is that speciation can obviously occur without relationship to environment. Does environment play a role in initiating new species? Yes, it allowed the Cambrian to appear as oxygen levels rose, but oxygen itself didn't require the species to appear. Species therefore most likely appear without reference to environmental drive.

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.

dhw: 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.

We will never solve our difference here. You won't accept that God's purpose was humans.

dhw: 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.

dhw: 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.

An animal cannot suddenly enter the water as a lifestyle without prior change. Speciation first to adapt to the new lifestyle environment cbrings.