Immunity: Gamma Delta T cells hunt with precision (Introduction)

by David Turell , Friday, November 23, 2018, 18:23 (2193 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: […] And it is you who insist that the anatomy of the whale has to be changed before it can enter the water. As repeated over and over again, my proposal is that organisms change IN RESPONSE to changing conditions, as vividly illustrated by minor adaptations. NOT “aforehand”. I use the term “design” as a counter to “chance” (I suggest that the cell communities deliberately change their structure), but I have always accepted that my hypothesis, like your own, is unproven: nobody knows the extent to which adaptation to new conditions may lead to the major, more complex changes required for speciation. That is why, like your own, my hypothesis remains a hypothesis.

DAVID: What you blithely constantly overlook is the complexity of design required by my prime example of mammals entering a watery environment and changing both physically and physiologically to enter the new situation. Somehow your brilliant cells can figure out how to change themselves to handle the new way of living. It cannot be step by step, as you should believe by accepting design, but then you do invent the idea that since cells/ animals do minor adaptations, they can somehow create giant changes. I find your concept totally illogical. And the fossil record only shows giant jumps in form and function. The fossil record at this point only supports my view. Beware the gaps. Your idea does not cover them.

dhw: "What you blithely constantly overlook" is what I have bolded at the end of the response you have quoted above. Nobody knows how the major changes take place, but I don’t know why you think the fossil record supports the view that an unknown, sourceless, immaterial mind personally dabbled with a set of prewhales to give them fins before they entered the water, and then over millions of years did more dabbles to create the other features that distinguish modern whales from the known series of ancestors – each modification somehow but inexplicably being a stepping stone to Homo sapiens. The hypothesis that organisms have a mechanism that enables them to change their own structure in response to changing conditions is not illogical, because we know that is precisely what they do when they adapt (unless you now wish to tell us that your God personally dabbles every minor adaptation). But there is no evidence that the same mechanism is capable of the major changes necessary for speciation, and so it remains a logical HYPOTHESIS. The fact that you reject it while I regard it as possible does not make it illogical. A hypothesis is an idea that is suggested as an explanation for something, but has not been proved to be true. To give another example, I would describe the idea that the complexities of life have been designed by an unknown mind we call God as a logical hypothesis.

What you have again ignored is the obvious requirement for complex design to make the required changes. We know organisms can initiate their own minor adaptations. The fossil gaps in the records support only punctuated equilibrium with major advances which require design. Logically only a mind can design to that required degree. Your stretched hypothesis that somehow minor adaptations can reach major adaptations has no evidence of support , by which minor changes in the fossil record show the advance to a major change. What is logical is major gaps require major design. What you describe is a hypothesis which has little likelihood of being correct , based on existing evidence.