Interpreting examples of evolution (Evolution)

by dhw, Friday, March 20, 2020, 10:54 (1707 days ago)

"A fish with early fingers"

QUOTE: It lived during the Late Devonian period, 393 million to 359 million years ago, when fish like this one began wading out of shallow water onto land.

DAVID: This form had to exist if we accept common descent. But why this advanced skeletal state when not needed? God's advanced planning is my answer.

dhw: I would say the answer lies in the above quote. Once fish began to wade out onto land, their intelligent cell communities began to look for ways to improve their adaptation to a new environment.

DAVID: And I would ask, how did an ancient fish mind know to grow fingers many centuries in advance. Only a planning mind knows that point

It wasn’t many centuries in advance! It grew fingers to help it cope better with new conditions (land instead of water)! And as evolution progressed, so did the adaptations! The fish was a life form in its own right – not specially designed as one of millions of stepping stones to H. sapiens!

"Manta rays":

QUOTE: Most of the deepest dives occurred during nighttime, possibly to access important food resources.

DAVID: Those enormous pressures would crush maladapted organisms.

dhw: If we accept the reason (to access food supplies), we have another example of how intelligent cell communities change themselves in response to requirements as organisms look to use the conditions in order to improve their chances of survival.

DAVID: The rays will follow the food supply and will epigenetically modify to keep eating. All mechanisms provided by God. Just methylate!

The theistic question is whether 3.8 billion years ago your God preprogrammed the modifications, personally popped in to dabble them, or provided the mechanism whereby the cell communities of the ray autonomously modified themselves.

“Lots of genetic mixing”:

DAVID: My interpretation remains the same: God used the adaptive abilities of the various human groups to result in a final group of sapiens well prepared for a variety of climates, and infectious processes.

As if a God whose sole purpose was to create H. sapiens, and who could do it any way he wanted, chose to do it by specially designing all the bits and pieces separately in different species, all of which he got rid of when he’d finally arrived at the species he could have created straight away if he’d wanted to.

“Cambrian explosion”:

DAVID: Of course echinoderms modified, but the question of why new phyla did not appear is not answered. Darwinists are drowning in their own static incomplete theories, and the Cambrian is still an unexplained huge gap that defies all natural theories.

How about this: a crucial change took place in the environment (maybe an increase in oxygen) which allowed for a massive burst of creativity (driven, I suggest, by the intelligent cell communities that comprise all organisms), with new species galore seeking to cope with or exploit the new environment. Once the new environment was firmly established, there was no need or even opportunity for innovation. As in all phases of life’s history, the major upheaval was followed by a long period of stasis. There would have been lots of minor variations to cope with or to exploit minor differences in conditions, but – as in our current world – there were no new species, because speciation occurs through major changes, whether local or global. I believe the theory is known as punctuated equilibrium.