Human evolution; our feet differ from apes. (Introduction)

by David Turell , Tuesday, March 03, 2020, 19:16 (1726 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: And again you skip the gaps in the fossil record. Changes are always after the gap, no itty bitty adaptive steps ever seen.

dhw: I was responding to your constant misrepresentation of my theory as demanding knowledge of the future. It doesn’t. So now you switch back to the gaps. Of course changes are after the gap! Even if something changed overnight, there would still be a gap between before and after!The reply I gave you to this point was:

dhw: It’s a pity we don’t have a few thousand pre-Lucys to see how stiff all her ancestors’ feet were. And then a few thousand more fossils to see how stiff the feet were between all the generations of all the hominins and early homos prior to Sapiens. Without them, of course, it’s impossible to say how fast or slow the adaptation was.

DAVID: So we are left with gaps that strongly support design.

dhw: Gaps are gaps. They don’t support any theory, and a slow adaptation could still be design through the intelligence of the cell communities.

With no fossil evidence! You are not as troubled as Gould was. He had to invent punc-inc to satisfy himself about gaps.

However, your original reply was:
DAVID: Agreed, but she survived and my God took care of the needed designs. We have to work with the only fossils we have.

dhw: That does not mean we can assume that there was not a gradual development and that your God must have jumped in at a specific moment to pop in a transverse arch.

DAVID: Your double negative again suggests itty bitty adaptations, with no evidence.

dhw: Nor is there any evidence of your God stepping in and giving pre-Lucy a transverse arch. If you believe in common descent, the fossil record can only provide dots along the way. We have no idea what took place between the dots, which is why you agreed that it is impossible to say how fast or slow the adaptation was.

Gaps make it seem as if changes are fast. You are not explaining them, although as time passes they never go away.