Evolution: frog adaptation (Evolution)

by dhw, Wednesday, September 20, 2017, 13:31 (2619 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Note my bold: do you agree intelligent planning is required for the increasing complexity?

dhw: No. The whole point of my hypothesis is that organisms RESPOND to challenges and opportunities by using their perhaps God-given intelligence. It may even be that some opportunities are discovered by chance (particularly in the case of natural wonders), but even then it takes intelligence to recognize the benefits of a chance discovery and build on them. The key to my hypothesis is intelligent RESPONSE, not crystal ball gazing followed by planning followed by the actual events that demand or allow the physical change, which may or may not entail an increase in complexity.

DAVID: Once again you are skipping over the issue of gaps in the fossil record. Even the few intermediate forms are giant leaps in form and function. You do not answer how this is covered. My answer is foresight and planning to look at a current goal.. No crystal ball fuzziness required.

You can’t plan unless you know what you are planning for, i.e. future conditions. That is crystal ball gazing, unless you are arguing that your God preprogrammed every environmental change in the history of evolution.

The gaps are saltations, i.e. major adaptations or innovations with no known intermediate stages. These are the great mystery of evolution. Your hypothesis is that your God preprogrammed every single one 3.8 billion years ago, or dabbled them personally, even though his primary aim was to produce the human brain. My hypothesis is that cell communities have the intelligence (possibly God-given) to design their own major adaptations or innovations. You’ve heard all this a hundred times over, so why you regard it as “skipping the issue” of gaps, i.e. of saltatory major adaptations or innovations, I don’t know.