Evolution: more gaps in foraminifera (Evolution)

by dhw, Thursday, October 25, 2018, 11:21 (2219 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: Bacteria prove that multicellularity, the dog’s nose, the camel's hump, the weaverbird’s nest the monarch butterfly’s migration and the human brain are not necessary for life to survive. You also have your God specially designing bird sleep, dandelion seed, shrimp punching and insects hibernating. So why do you keep using the same old "not needed" and the same "by design" arguments to single out the human brain? They apply to every organ and organism of the multicellular world.

DAVID: And how did life jump from ever present bacteria to complex forms? Not by chance.

dhw: I asked why you keep trotting out the same old “not needed” and “by design” arguments to single out the human brain, when the same arguments apply to every other multicellular organism and natural wonder you can think of. You respond by changing the subject.

DAVID: Subject not changed if the discussion is viewed in totality. Our brain is demonstrably beyond any need to drive its appearance. It is you who constantly revert to stresses and environmental changes as causing evolution, while I think it is planned. Environment plays a small role, if any to explain whales, bats, etc.

And etc. etc. etc. Nobody knows the causes of speciation, and that includes the causes that led to humans descending from tree-dwelling apes. But the idea that environmental change drove our ancestors to climb down from (possibly disappearing) trees, to adopt bipedalism and to exercise and thereby develop their brains in devising new ways to improve their chances of survival seems to me every bit as plausible as the idea that your God preprogrammed the process 3.8 billion years ago, or popped in to fiddle with their anatomy before they climbed down, and fiddled with their brains so that they could think up new strategies and, in due course, extend their thoughts to matters beyond their immediate needs.