Innovation and Speciation: whale changes (Evolution)

by dhw, Sunday, May 28, 2017, 15:24 (2517 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: There must be a separate process existent to act on that opportunity. That next step of improvement or complexity is not required to happen. That is why I break the whole process into discontinuous parts.
dhw: The separate “process” is what we have called the drive for improvement/complexity. We came to the conclusion that this drive must exist because NO speciation was REQUIRED. The drive for improvement is what leads to the next step, which is the actual improvement/complexity. Why do you want to break the process into discontinuous parts? Shouldn't all parts of a theory cohere?
DAVID: Of course they cohere. their separation is recognized.

If they cohere, there is a linked process of cause and effect, e.g. drive for improvement/complexity, triggered by environment change, leads to production of improvement/complexity. What’s the problem?

dhw:As for the reference to humans, it is the central plank of your whole hypothesis, and is the root cause of all the illogicalities and contradictions I keep pointing out.
DAVID: I have no way of explaining exactly how God did His work. It is obvious to me evolutionary processes were used by Him for the universe, the Earth and for life. It is obvious to me there are only chance or design with no third alternative. Chance is totally rejected. Design requires a designing mind. Nothing illogical here. Humans arrived against all odds, and for no demonstrable driving stress. This is the basis of my belief. Not guessed, but I do guess at God's motives and methods and I am convinced his goal was humans. Nothing illogical or contradictory here.

The illogicalities and contradictions arise from your guesses at his motives and methods, not from your belief in evolution or from the choice between chance and design!

dhw: I'll stick with the Cambrian, since you agree that environmental change is an initiator (you go even further and say it's a cause!) of speciation.
DAVID: I said the 'course of speciation', nothing more.
dhw: Once again: you wrote, “Does environment play a role in initiating new species? Yes, it allowed the Cambrian to appear as oxygen levels rose.” And then you wrote: ““I am using the more active form of 'initiate' as to cause”, not realizing that you were yet again contradicting yourself.
DAVID: You misunderstand. No contradiction. I view 'initiate' to be approached as a word in its causative sense and also in its allowing opportunity sense. In the Cambrian the new oxygen level allowed a speciation process to create new ones, but did not demand it. I've never changed, Speciation was not required to happen.

So now your original “yes” apparently meant that environment both caused AND allowed speciation! And for the hundredth time, we know speciation was not REQUIRED to happen, and that is why we have said there must be a drive for improvement/complexity.

DAVID: Have you forgotten that early humans were in the Rift Valley, a small part of Kenya in Africa, not global! I am discussing local.
I am not going to pretend I know how humans originated, but here is one suggestion, which supports my own:
BBC News - 'First human' discovered in Ethiopia
www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-31718336
QUOTE: A separate study in Science hints that a change in climate might have been a factor. An analysis of the fossilised plant and animal life in the area suggests that what had once been lush forest had become dry grassland.
As the trees made way for vast plains, ancient human-like primates found a way of exploiting the new environmental niche, developing bigger brains and becoming less reliant on having big jaws and teeth by using tools.

DAVID: I've seen this item before: didn't you noticed it supports my view. Note the hominins are there before the climate changes, and they take advantage of it! Stone tools for butchering, and much later conquered fire for cooking, resulting in better nutrition which helped the big brain do better work as they learned to use it.

I thought it said “ancient human-like primates” which then developed bigger brains. Of course the primates would have been there before the climate change, or there would have been no primate ancestor to change into a hominin.