Innovation and Speciation:baleen whale feeding (Evolution)

by David Turell , Friday, June 23, 2017, 01:28 (2709 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: Because of the gap size in the changes as evolution advances. Eight/nine whale stages are each gigantically different in form and function. You never looks at the size of the gaps in our discussion. Putting your nostrils on top of your head as one blowhole is a giant step. By dabbling I mean small changes, but more than epigenetic adaptations. As for hominins, they have large skeletal changes for bipedalism and a giant jump in brain size with each gap. Requires advanced architectural planning to allow for the phenotypical gaps in form and function.

dhw: This is a big surprise. Last Saturday I asked "Are you saying that at regular intervals, your God dabbled with the brain, increasing its volume by 200 cc (average)...." and you answered yes. In the past you have told us your only dilemma has been whether evolutionary innovations were preprogrammed 3.8 billion years ago, or dabbled. Now you are telling us that all the major innovations and the brain jumps were preprogrammed. For reasons you simply do not know, 3.8 billion years ago your God, whose only purpose was to produce homo sapiens, specially designed eight/nine stages of pre-whale to whale, plus presumably every new species (broad sense) extant and extinct (they all require big changes, don’t they?) plus all the homo brain jumps. And this sudden new definition of dabbling, hatched between Saturday and Thursday, has come about because the idea of your God RESPONDING to environmental change (as opposed to anticipating it) would bring us perilously close to my hypothesis that speciation may not be the result of advance planning!

No big surprise. My analysis is always continuing and I've told you in the past that your goading questions make me rethink my theories. The big gaps in body plan and processes require meticulous advanced planning when there There is no other way they can work, because of the coordination involved in the mutations, etc. It is conceivable that it was all pre-programmed 3.8 billion years ago. But you response raises the issue of the level of dabbling. The whales require major planning if the change is done contemporaneously by God at the time stage one whale turned into stage two. A minor change in monkey or hominin lumbar spine as a preparation for bipedalism is what I think dabbling would be. We are just discussing labelling what God does, nothing very important. As for your idea that speciation can occur without planning, what it implies is that it occurs by simple itty-bitty hunt and peck steps, which does not fit the gap evidence in all the fossil record. I view it as wishful thinking, trying to get rid of God as a driving external force.

DAVID: Free will is at the mental level, a side issue.. Why drag it in? It doesn't fit. We are discussing God at the evolutionary level of form and function.

dhw: We are discussing God’s motives and methods, and free will is an example of God’s willingness to cede control. If he is willing to cede control in one area of life, why not in another – namely, by allowing organisms to work out their own ways of survival and improvement?

Mental states are not physical states. Our free will is a one time mental concession to allow us free use of the gift of our giant brain. God maintains physical control of evolutionary processes for all physical changes. It is the only example where He has allowed freedom, and doesn't fit as a glaring exception.