Evolution and humans: big brain size uses energy (Evolution)

by David Turell , Monday, November 13, 2017, 15:29 (2565 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: Your answer ignores the eco-niche of each area of balance. I eat in my own.

dhw: So if God’s purpose was to produce you and the food you eat in your own eco-niche, why did he specially design the nest, the wasp that lays its eggs on the spider’s back, the skull-shrinking shrew and the duckbilled platypus etc.? Or are you going to tell me that life couldn’t have gone on without them?

Each econiche has is own balance and all the econiches contributed to the overall balance of total nature.

DAVID: You seem to misunderstand the meaning of 'design'. Design requires planning to create a working design for a new organism.

dhw: My whale hypothesis: whales needed food, which they found in the water. Once they were in the water, they needed to make changes to their bodies. The cell communities designed the changes in response to that need. No planning in advance of the need. I suggest that organic design is a response to need or opportunity for improvement, just as it is for human design.

Left out of your hypothesis: the gap in fossil record. Each new whale series species is an extensive change in body form and function, nothing simple. All new parts must be coordinated before the new organism can function properly. It is impossible your cell communities had he ability to plan the designs needed.

DAVID: ...you are forgetting the huge gaps in the fossil record, which is especially seen in the whale series in which each step is so different from the past one.

dhw: In my hypothesis, the cell communities are capable of designing saltations – as opposed to your God providing the first living cells with a programme to pass on for every saltation for every innovation throughout the history of evolution (or alternatively dabbling each one personally), just to keep life going till he can produce Homo sapiens.

And I view it as logically impossible. All cell changes we know about are simple adaptations.

DAVID: [..] And you know that mammals made their own decision to enter the water. Perhaps God made the decision for them by transforming them in stages.

dhw: You are constantly talking of purpose, but you refuse to acknowledge the possibility that organisms might have a purpose of their own; namely, survival and/or improvement. And if God exists, he may have given them the means to try and achieve that purpose.

All life is homeostasis in action. All life's activity shows purpose, but that doesn't translate to speciation, much as you might wish it.

dhw: I know you are confused about whales. What is confusing about the process I have described above?

DAVID: The process is exactly what I propose. God-directed change.

dhw: Which you say leaves you confused. So what is confusing about the process I have proposed above?

It leaves out the mental activity required.

DAVID: Because history shows what history shows. God prefers starting stages and then evolving. Fits history perfectly. In the bush you are trying to interpret His mind. I just read history.

dhw: But you are confused because you don’t know why he had to produce the eight stages of whale, or (in an earlier post which I don’t have time to look for now) why he had to produce the big universe if all he wanted was us, or whether he has limitations or not. But you are right: starting stages and evolution fit history perfectly. It’s just your theory of your God’s motive and method that doesn’t fit history and causes you so much confusion.

I'm not confused. I question the need for such a design-requiring effort. I have a whale purpose theory expressed before. The whales are necessary for the oceans's balance of nature. Their decomposing dead bodies benefit ocean floor organisms. I've seen papers on the subject. Perhaps God's point is: look at what I can do with my powers, reversing the course of evolution from mammals on land to put them back in water where life came from. But that is a tongue-in-cheek view and I don't believe it.