Natures wonders: Subsea Microorganisms Long Life (Introduction)

by David Turell , Thursday, August 23, 2018, 19:41 (2282 days ago) @ Balance_Maintained

DHW: Amazingly, you have just described precisely what bacteria are able to do, as you will see from the list of examples I gave you on Saturday 11 August under “An Alternative to Evolution: Expounded Upon”, which you appear to have missed.

I would wager that any of the stuff on that list is explainable as (relatively)simple biochemical trigger/response mechanisms. I didn't see anything in that list that seemed to require prior planning or innate self-awareness beyond what might be described as self-preservation at the most basic level.

DAVID (referring to Tony’s comment above): A beautifully expressed paragraph which describes the need for foresight and planning before a complexly changed organism can arrive! No itty-bitty steps, suggested by the dhw proposal, exist in the fossil record.

DHW: I keep repeating that in my proposal evolution progresses through responses to environmental changes – e.g. the pre-whale entered the water before its legs changed to fins – as opposed to divine dabbling or preprogramming in advance of environmental changes - e.g. pre-whales lying on the shore while your God changes their legs to fins. Your proposal also raises the never answered question of the extent to which your God controls the environment.

Tony: The problem with your proposal is, as we keep saying, that it would either have to happen to two creatures at the exact same time, both of which had to survive, and in a single geographical area, so that there would be a breed-able pair. Remember, species can't interbreed. Could God have done it that way, perhaps, except that there is no evidence that he did it that way. Genetic programming similarity is shared across species separated by geography, time, and vast species boundaries (Like human's and banana's). Please explain how you get that degree of similarity via common descent in a human, cat, chicken, fruit fly, and banana. There is no evolutionary path that will get you there.

Tony has raised the issue of Haldane's dilemma, not enough time for sexual reproduction to create enough new organisms with the new mutation to then produce a new species: noted here years ago: Saturday, March 29, 2008, 01:39. George Jellis suggested ways around it.