Innovation and Speciation: aquatic mammals avoid bends (Evolution)

by dhw, Wednesday, December 02, 2020, 12:49 (1451 days ago) @ David Turell

Dolphins
DAVID: Enormous changes from cell intelligence, with no mind is pie in the sky.

dhw: Cellular intelligence would come from a mind different to ours. I suspect there are many scientists who would say that an unknown, sourceless “mind” stepping in to operate on the legs of pre-whales and pre-dolphins before they enter the water is “pie in the sky”.

DAVID: Now you refer to atheists as an answer.

I am pointing out that “pie in the sky” is a silly non-argument, whether used by theists or by atheists, and you should not stoop to such levels. Would you tell your much admired Shapiro that his theory is "pie in the sky"? (See below)

Denton
DAVID: Darwin's theory has never been able to explain our appearance from the point of view of necessary survivability. Our ape cousins prove the point.

dhw: Since bacteria have survived, NO multicellular organism was “necessary”. But multicellular organisms may have improved their chances of survival when and where conditions were proving difficult. This applies to all species, including humans. (In other locations, apes may have had no problem. Or there were too many apes, or one group was more adventurous than another. Plenty of possibilities.)

DAVID: But to relying on survivability ,which is an unproven theory.

dhw: There are NO proven theories! Why do you find my explanation unreasonable?

DAVID: Mammals to water is a complication, requiring an enormous change in physiological mechanisms. This does not seem to tell us survival was a issue. You've skipped around the issue that humans were never required, and their appearance is a powerful argument for God as Adler shows.

It is perfectly logical that mammals entering the water may have been necessitated by a threat to survival. I have answered your second point in my now bolded reply above, except that I have used your word “necessary” instead of your word “required”.

Fish to land
dhw: Why your God should have preprogrammed or dabbled every individual muscle-brain-skull arrangement for every individual species when, according to you, all he wanted was us and our food supply, remains a mystery for you to solve. […]

DAVID: I accept what God chose to do. I don't need to know His reasons. Your logical explanations are following a basic establishment of a very human god.

You accept your own theory that your God chose to directly design every innovation, strategy and natural wonder in life’s history, and they were all part of his goal to design humans, although 99% of them had nothing to do with humans. Please stop pretending that your theory is the only possible truth. Your silly “humanizing” objection has been demolished over and over again.

Genome complexity
Quote: "In general, cells use similar working mechanisms from a common ancestor. They all learned the same tricks as long as these tricks were useful.'"

dhw: A nice way of summing up the way evolution works: cells use the mechanisms in order to devise and hand on new tricks.

DAVID: All it shows is common descent, which we both accept, and I think designed by God.

dhw: It proposes that cells use mechanisms and learn tricks. Just pointing out yet more support for Shapiro's/my theory.

DAVID: Cells tricks are quite simple and automatic.

dhw: I’m referring to those that are complex and require intelligence.

DAVID: Even Shapiro doesn't go that far. All He has found is bacteria can edit DNA, and stay the same species.

How many more times? Shapiro DOES go that far. The fact that his research is on bacteria does not stop him from using the research of his fellow scientists! Here are his conclusions:
SHAPIRO: Cells are built to evolve; they have the ability to alter their hereditary characteristics rapidly through well-described natural genetic engineering and epigenetic processes as well as by cell mergers. […} Evolutionary novelty arises from the production of new cell and multicellular structures as a result of cellular self modification functions and cell fusions.
All quoted by you, p. 142, The Atheist Delusion.

Bird beak
QUOTE: "A “sixth sense” feature might have helped carnivorous theropods such as Neovenator find prey by probing their snouts into mud or murky water."

DAVID: If the prey is remote, how does the animal know what it is looking for? Seems it had to be designed for use.

I would suggest that it doesn’t know what it is looking for but, like the therapods, is “sniffing out” what is available. Only the bird’s beak has the same “sniffability” as the therapods’ snouts.