Evolution and humans: more on learning to read (Evolution)

by dhw, Tuesday, November 13, 2018, 13:23 (2200 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: “Logically the unchanged apes who stayed in the trees had no need to leave” seems to be the key to your thinking.We don’t know why Lucy and her ilk left the trees. She didn’t keep a diary. But, as explained above, it is not unreasonable to suppose that in a particular location a particular group of apes DID need to leave the trees. Or some apes decided to leave the trees and seek a new life, while the others decided to stay as they were.

DAVID: Your version, which I have fully understood from the beginning, differs from mine in the impetus for change. You assume some guys, while apes, left the trees and the change in environment forced them to change form to fit the new partially terrestrial life. Accepting, currently, the gaps in the fossil record as real, which is the only historical record we have, I see a design problem. Lucy is transitional form with huge anatomic changes, including, as I've discussed elsewhere, the obstetrical dilemma. Gaps require design and design requires a designing mind. I'm with God. To conclude, of course the unchanged apes stayed treed; what else could they do?

You always see a design problem, whether major or minor, since you have your God designing every innovation, lifestyle and natural wonder in the history of life. Once more: we do not know how major saltatory changes take place, which is why speciation remains a mystery, but saltation would inevitably create gaps. Meanwhile, your own saltation is from your argument that there was no need for apes to leave the trees since apes remained as they were – to which I have given a perfectly reasonable answer, now bolded – back to the huge anatomic changes which we have already discussed ad nauseam. However, since you repeat the problem yet again, I’ll repeat the two hypotheses yet again: since we know that exercise changes the body and brain, I propose that for whatever reason a particular group or groups of apes descended from the trees, and body and brain responded to the new way of life. Lucy exemplifies the transition. You propose that your God selected a particular group or groups, ignoring all the other apes, fiddled with their anatomies while they were still up in the trees, and then told them to climb down and start a new way of life. Believe it if you will.