Natural Wonders & Evolution: grizzly bear hibernation (Evolution)

by David Turell , Tuesday, December 31, 2019, 14:48 (1787 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: How did this evolve by chance. There is no way a bear could try going to sleep for months and survive without preparation by a designer:
https://phys.org/news/2019-12-learning-from-the-bears.html

QUOTE: "Grizzly bears spend many months in hibernation, but their muscles do not suffer from the lack of movement."

DAVID: Non-essential amino acids are an interesting observation. They must have been designed just for this very special process and therefore are required to be in these bears. There are 20 essential amino acids that are left-handed and must be present for life to exist. It is not known if these special proteins exist anywhere else. The grizzly DNA requires this behavior to happen each year. Bears did not just decide to require this process. Note my bold: "Nature perfected a way". Pure Darwin illogical thinking. How about a designer!

dhw: Thank you for yet another fascinating “wonder”. Of course the argument applies to all creatures that hibernate, and to all creatures that adapt successfully to difficult conditions. And of course these adaptations do not develop by chance, and of course the bear didn’t “decide to require this process.” The conditions required this process, and we know that countless species have died out when they are unable to cope with new conditions. “Nature perfected a way” suggests to me that there is a mechanism at work (possibly designed by your God) which enables SOME species to survive while others go extinct. It is what Shapiro calls “natural genetic engineering” carried out by intelligent cells. It’s just a theory, but it removes the need for your God to preprogramme or dabble every single adaptation in every single species that survives (while 90% or so die out), in anticipation of every environmental change, whether local or global, for 3.X thousand million years, all for the purpose of designing one species. Either the cells work out a solution, or the organism dies – hence the long, long history of changing life forms. So much simpler and so much more logical than your theory. Ockham would rejoice.

Ockham as a priest would totally disagree with you, but your suggestion that doing without God is simpler than accepting him is an unreasonable denial of the need for very complex design as the bears demonstrate. This is why you cannot dismiss design arguments and sit on your fence. We cannot know how this appeared, since fossils don't talk, but design does. The climate these bears live in has no food supply for many months, but unlike birds they do not migrate, as the land to be covered is too far away. But animals can migrate as in Africa with the Wildebeest movements in Kenya with much shorter distances. Did the bears think we can't get that far so lets sleep? The bears did not know how far 'far' is without trying. Darwinists will say those that tried died but the smart ones stayed and slept. And skip over the very complex physiological design issue of no movement and no urine output as one set of examples of the problems to be overcome. Ockham would rejoice in the simple solution of God does it. As for smart cells, they can only make tiny adjustments , which is all we have demonstrated in the current science studies. The gaps in the fossil record don't fit the theory, as Gould noted. What is also known is the North Pole was tropical with palm trees at in ancient time. Bears or their forebears could have moved as the climate changed, but some stayed and achieved the changes. I'll stick with God speciates, simple!