Natures wonders: fish uses other fish for a taxi (Introduction)

by David Turell , Sunday, January 19, 2020, 21:03 (1768 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: As regards your usual problem, of course the sucker had to “develop” before the fish could latch on, but that doesn’t mean the sucker suddenly appeared as if by magic. It is not beyond the bounds of imagination that some clever predecessor discovered that life was much easier if it hitched a lift. Maybe the first pre-remoras did have trouble holding on. Some may have slid off. But the idea was good, and so just as pre-whale legs would have turned into flippers as the organism adapted itself to marine life, those parts of the remora (and other such organisms) it used to hold on with would have transformed themselves into suckers. Yes, this presupposes intelligence – the ability of cells to transform themselves in order to exploit a different environment. Shapiro calls the process “natural genetic engineering”.

DAVID: As usual you ha e conjured up lots of fore thinking for the fish. Remember, fish are slick. If you've ever caught on a hook and tried to remove it, it is very difficult to hold unless tightly gripped. Developing a sucker takes lots of evolutionary time for developing the proper DNA changes. Your just-so story requires centuries of remora persistence until they get it right. No organism during the human time of studying adaptation has shown any degree of this massive change. That is the problem we face. The flipper and teh sucker require design, and a designer.

dhw: There is no “forethinking” if an organism finds an advantageous strategy and its body changes in order to perfect that strategy. How do you know what time is involved? Lamarck is back in favour, so do you think there are no acquired characteristics to be inherited? During the human time of study, nobody has observed any of the innovations that led to new species, and nobody has found your 3.8-billion-year-old programme for suckers and the rest of evolution, and nobody has seen God pop in and dabble or give lessons to whales or weaverbirds or sucker fish or any other species. If my hypothesis is a just-so story, what should we call yours? Yes, evolutionary innovation is the problem we face, and yes, I am all in favour of design. And one of several theories is that cells/cell communities are intelligent enough to do their own designing, and maybe your God gave them that ability.

And it is all pipe dream. You are imagining design appears by magic if no thinking mind is available to plan the necessary parts for the advance. You are fighting the chance vs. design problem and saying these simple cells can do it on their own. Our human experience with design says it is not logical. As for my theory it is an immaterial discussion of God's possible methods. You know darn well it can't be 'found'. But it is certainly logical. So maybe God simply designed it.

vis
Under “Evolution: complexify or not”:
DAVID: There are many sorts of examples of change or no change: it seems scorpions never evolved much from their start. Mammals jumped into the water and became whales. Humans quickly evolved from apes. We can look for circumstances that pushed the changes but the reason we find as guesses and at times the changes are unreasonable. Mammal did not need to enter the water, as most mammals have survived just as they are. Apes have remained just fine over eight million years. Human appearance was not required. Which raises the observation that evolution could be following a drive by a designer.

dhw: You seem to think that any change in an organism requires a global change in the environment. It is not unreasonable to suppose that while most mammals and apes remained the same, there were locations in which conditions demanded (or allowed) change! In X, food was scarce on land, so there the pre-whales entered the water. In Y, all the trees blew down, or it simply proved advantageous to hunt for food on the ground, so pre-homo descended from the trees. And once the changes had taken place, successful new species may have flourished and even spread. Most scorpions appear to have led happy lives exactly as they were and are now. But they had buddies who weren’t so happy, and their buddies therefore did something different. Too simple for you?

Yes, much too simple. Takes no notice of the design issue.Your same old problem, clutching at straws. First, entering water created huge physiological problems that require intensive design to succeed. As for the apes, one group came down from the trees, changed the way their hands and shoulders are formed and do tasks apes can't do. The pelvis changed for a different path to birth to accommodate the huge brain that appeared and allowed true upright movement at the same time. All planned by ape brain? No way. There has to be a reason why some species make great advances and others don't bother. We can ask that question from the first bacteria on up. Your answer is really that the ones that advance to more complexity want to do so, and some lesser types don't care (scorpions). You use opportunity from environment, etc. as a reason for these changes , but it is incomplete reasoning. Where does the desire come from if the organisms are in charge? Their brains and thoughts are not like ours. Your argument is basically empty and the need for a designer is obvious.