Pointy eggs and whales (Evolution)

by David Turell , Tuesday, August 28, 2018, 18:19 (2277 days ago) @ dhw

TONY: If A then B programming. I don't know what the parameters are, but I would hazard a few guesses and say that perhaps certain dietary or environmental inputs (A) are the parameters that determine the output of the eggshape (B). I would also guess that when we find out what those inputs are, they will be ubiquitous between all pointy egg bird species.

dhw: An eggcellent answer. I would suggest that it is the environmental input (the steep slope) that determines the egg shape. Now please tell us how the birds come up with their pointy eggs. Did your God preprogramme them to do it, do a dabble, or install a mechanism enabling organisms to adapt autonomously to their environment?

My answer is God helped.

dhw (re whales): But if it all began with a local crisis,I would assume that any pre-whales stuck on land would have died. We have fossils that show different stages of development from pre-whales to whales. Here is a website that traces all the known stages.
Whale Evolution - AMNH
https://www.amnh.org/.../whales-giants-of-the-deep/whale-evolution

TONY: That link will not open, but here is one of my own: The Evolution of Whales
[…]
So, this is how we got whales, but they aren't direct ancestors, and we have no trail of direct ancestry. How do we know? Cause they all got dem der ear holes bubba.

dhw: The website traces other anatomical similarities. Here is another which you will reject but which also focuses on other areas of the anatomy (including important vestigial structures). I’d be interested to hear whether your fellow theist David accepts or rejects the argument.

I've seen a whole whale skeleton in Alaska. Those vestigial legs are obvious. God follows his previous blueprints for phenotype.

TONY: Because the evidence shows that they spring up from nowhere, with no direct ancestry. That is documented. See above. I claim that the evidence shows no direct ancestry because the evidence shows no direct ancestry. I am not the one making incredible claims based off ear holes.

dhw: Sorry, but you asked me to show you “something that can be repeated in a lab, step-wise”, and to show you the evidence “by reproducing the process. That is science.” Let me repeat: NOBODY KNOWS HOW SPECIATION TOOK PLACE. We only have theories. Now please show me your scientific evidence that organisms can spring from nowhere. You claim that the gaps in the record denote the direct actions of an unknown and unprovable supermind. Others claim that the gaps in the record denote the rarity of fossils. Please don’t tell me that your theory is more scientific than theirs.

dhw: But if it all began with a local crisis,I would assume that any pre-whales stuck on land would have died.

DAVID: 'Crisis' drove them into the water to which they quickly adapted on their own is pure imaginative just-so storytelling.

dhw: I eagerly await your response to my request under "God and Evolution" for your own explanation other than wooj-wooj or a world twiddling tour. Meanwhile, the websites suggest that the different stages to which you drew our attention took millions of years, not that they “quickly adapted”. Here is a story for you: Chapter 1: crisis: shortage of food on land, Willy & Co find food in water. Feed and return to land. Chapter 2: spend more and more time in water, resulting in more and more adaptations. Each stage is perfectly capable of surviving for hundreds of thousands if not millions of years as an organism in its right (see the different phases detailed by the websites, which you have never questioned before). Chapter 3: the different variants of whale we know today. Who knows if there will be a chapter 4, say 10 million years from now?

Your just-so story implies gradual changes. The fossil story shows us giant gaps in form. Either the gaps are true or the fossils for your story are not available. Available current evidence is on my side.

DAVID: (QUOTING RE BACTERIA) "The research team then used these genomic blueprints to construct a giant evolutionary tree of bacteria based on 120 genes that are highly conserved across the bacterial domain."

Tony: Unfortunately, it starts with the same assumption of common descent.

DAVID: I think the conserved genes are God's primary blueprint.

dhw: And conserved genes can be taken as evidence of common descent, not as a prior assumption. I have proposed that if God exists, cellular intelligence is his “primary blueprint”.

Cellular intelligence is pure theory, not proven. Cells have no means of thinking.