Innovation and Speciation: aquatic mammals avoid bends (Evolution)

by David Turell , Saturday, December 05, 2020, 18:43 (1447 days ago) @ dhw

Denton

DAVID: Just because I didn't discuss it doesn't mean I accept a drive for survival as driving evolution.

dhw: I thanked you for accepting the feasibility of the theory. I thought “reasonable” would imply “feasible”.

DAVID: Most new species require too many complicated designs to be practical for survival shown in whales and other aquatic mammals.

dhw: The exact contrary: the complicated designs ARE practical for survival, and that is the reason why the cell communities or your God designed them. Perhaps you mean they are too complicated for cells to design. That of course is the issue. Shapiro would disagree with you.

Onboard species design is way to complex for cell intelligence. You are still extrapolating Shapiro well beyond what he presents.

Genome complexity

DAVID: A theoretical proposal based on bacterial editing DNA.

dhw: Do you really think he didn’t incorporate the research of his fellow scientists?

DAVID: All of his theory is in the context of Darwinian evolution, which struggles to remain consistent with itself.

dhw: Now that you’ve dropped your absurd idea that Shapiro only deals with bacteria, would you please tell me what is “inconsistent” about his theory as quoted by you.

DAVID: It is a theory based on his research, and is therefor consistent with his research. Proves nothing about true speciation.

dhw: The theory is based on his research and on the research of his fellow scientists. But like your own theory about God’s existence, and about the divine goal and method of speciation, it has not been proven. That does not mean his theory is not feasible. I’ll pass over the feasibility of your own theory, dealt with on various other threads.

OK, we agree it is all theorizing. I'll stick with mine.

Aquatic mammals

dhw: Maybe they reckoned it was worth exploring the known waters rather than wandering off to who knows what? Anyway, why didn’t your God tell the mammals to migrate, instead of stepping in to operate on their legs before they entered the water? Much simpler. Or do you think he HAD TO send them into the water because otherwise he couldn’t have designed humans and their food supplies a few million years later?

DAVID: Remember, God does what He wants. He obviously wanted them to live in the water and engineered the necessary changes. Perfectly consistent with choosing to evolve humans. All consistent with theistic reasoning.

dhw: Presumably you have now dropped your theory that your God’s powers were limited, he was unable to directly design humans, and “had to” design everything else first. i.e. he was unable to do what he wanted in the way that he wanted to do it. If you’ve withdrawn it, please explain why your God, who does what he wants, designed millions of non-human life forms plus food supplies with no connection to humans, although what he wanted was humans.

Same old illogical view of a powerful God. I suggested God's ability to directly create humans was limited. That involves two considerations: 1) God had some personal limitation OR as I've constantly suggested He had to set up a NECESSARY FOOD SUPPLY before our population exploded, something He LOGICALLY would expect. God's personal limitations must always be considered for completeness, but I can chose the resulting theory that seems most logical to me, if not to you.

Primate vision

DAVID:A perfect system with no changes and the surprise of a researcher noted in bold. No changing mutations implies controlled design.

dhw: It certainly does, and congratulations to the designer. But if God exists and he did this directly, one can’t help wondering why he didn’t get every system “perfect” in the first place. Maybe he just kept on experimenting, or getting new ideas, or had invented an autonomous mechanism which hit the jackpot straight away this time, but otherwise simply went on adjusting its inventions as the need or opportunity arose.

Same old humanizing. You would probably propose our universe is the first in a line of failed experiments which didn't get to adequate fine tuning to allow life. The implication is God has to know what life requires as He constructs universes. Your God CANNOT EVER BE my God.