Natures wonders: bacteria can spear amoebas (Introduction)

by David Turell , Wednesday, August 30, 2017, 17:20 (2640 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: your all-powerful God’s primary purpose was to produce the human brain, and that’s why he preprogrammed or dabbled the higgledy-piggledy bush, so that he would be able to take his time over producing the one thing he really wanted to produce. And you find that logical.

Perfectly logical to me, if He wanted to take time for the evolution to evolve. It fits he history.

DAVID: We have no proof that survivability is a major issue due to population density, as you imply. Density is only an issue since WWII when we are displacing animal habitats.

I do not imply population density at all! Where did you get that from?

From your statement: " more and more new organisms came on the scene"

dhw:Once and for all: bacteria have survived, so NO further evolution was necessary for survivability. Multicellularity happened, and then there were new ways of exploiting the environment, new threats to survival, new means of surviving those threats…etc.

DAVID: See my comment re population density. Survival of the fittest is an unproven conjecture.

dhw: So how do you explain extinction, if not through the “conjecture” that extinct organisms were unable to cope with conditions at the time, whereas the survivors did cope?

Raup stated extinctions were almost always due to bad luck, not adapting quickly enough.

DAVID: I agree that major adaptations of the kind you describe are innovations. I use 'adaptation' as minor alterations of existing species, and major 'innovations' as speciation. Just semantics.

dhw: It’s not just semantics. You are confirming the point I keep trying to make: if major adaptations are innovations that lead to speciation, the SAME mechanism may be responsible for minor adaptations AND for innovations. You seem to accept minor adaptations as autonomous (i.e. without your God’s intervention), but you think your God must preprogramme or dabble major adaptations. That is why the dividing line is important. To put it in concrete terms, if finches can autonomously change the size and shape of their beaks, why shouldn’t pre-whales autonomously change the structure of their legs, or monarchs autonomously organize their migration, or weaverbirds autonomously design their own nests? The (perhaps God-given) mechanism I am referring to is, of course, cellular intelligence.

The beaks are within a species variation according to recent genetic research and simple epigenetics. Changing a hoofed leg to a flipper is a major reorganization of the anatomy with many muscle and bony changes, well beyond what we know about speciation. All the fossil evidence is of gaps and sudden appearance of major alterations. We do not understand this. You want cells to visualize the outcome and do it all at once. I say the only logical way is by a designing mind arranging for it by careful planning.