Evolution: frog adaptation (Evolution)

by David Turell , Saturday, September 23, 2017, 14:45 (2616 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: We know that only a mind can plan. This is the basis of the ID philosophy. You could accept that and not include God.

dhw: I accept that only intelligence of some kind can produce the minor and major adaptations and innovations that have resulted in the great evolutionary bush of life. I also accept the possibility that this intelligence was invented by your God. I do not accept that these adaptations and innovations must be planned in advance.
Meanwhile, you continue to gloss over the dislocation between your God’s so-called prime purpose and the higgledy-piggledy bush, which includes the story of the whale, plus the problem of why your all-powerful God needed eight stages and millions of years to come up with his final version of the whale, as well as the huge problem of the extent to which your planning God plans all the environmental changes, local and global, that trigger organismal change.

DAVID: If nothing is planned in advance to accommodate required change, can you explain the latest buildings in London? As for God's methods, I simply accept that He evolves solutions.

dhw: I have never said that humans do not plan in advance. So do many animals. I don’t know why you think the process of evolution is the same as the process of building houses. Houses, in case you hadn’t noticed, are inanimate, inorganic objects which as far as we know are incapable of reproducing themselves and of communicating with one another and of taking decisions. In that respect they are no different from birds’ nests and anthills. There is absolutely no parallel between the inorganic products of intelligence and the organic changes which organisms undergo during the process of evolution. You insist that your God preprogrammed or dabbled them all in advance. I propose that intelligent organisms (cell communities) responded to the challenges and opportunities offered by a changing environment. My hypothesis provides an answer to some of the questions that your hypothesis engenders, which are summarized above and which you continue to gloss over.

It is amazing to me that you cannot recognize the need for planning the changes that must occur within the gaps in the fossil record. I'm not glossing. I see the need for intelligent planning. You simply do not. Of course speciation is due to 'challenges and opportunities'. I'm suggesting a portion of the requirements, planning with foresight and then changing. Nothing else will work.