Innovation and Speciation: aquatic mammals avoid bends (Evolution)

by David Turell , Friday, December 11, 2020, 23:37 (1232 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: Shapiro's modifications are only adaptations within species. The rest is pure interesting theory about a possible way/method to speciation.

dhw: He specifies “evolutionary novelty” You may disagree with him, but at least you can stop pretending that he does not mean what he says.

Evolutionary novelty means what? Not variation within species.

Aquatic mammals
DAVID: Theoretically your version of a weaker God might need to experiment. Your

DAVID: Experimentation is your way of presenting a weak God. Not my image of God.

dhw: If he is incapable of directly designing what he wants, please give me a reason for his direct creation of all the life forms unconnected with what he wants. Ah, but you “have no idea why he uses that method”. How about experimentation, then? And just try to have a little more respect for inventors who experiment in order to produce what they are looking for.

There is one reason to assume God has to experiment. He doesn't know how to create, i.e., a weak god.

“Fine tuning of water” and “new extremophiles”

DAVID: Because I don't view God as creating for His own self-interest.

dhw: This is not the most enlightening form of discussion: imagine yourself saying to Dawkins: “Why is my design argument not feasible?” Answer: “Because I have a different view.”'

Accept that you and I have totally different views of God's personality and capabilities. Neither of us can know if we are right or wrong about our opinions. We allowed to differ.

Sea turtles

DAVID: Surprise!! Food supply.

dhw: A quick google suggests that the modern sea turtle goes back about 100 million years, so I suppose you could argue that this was part of the 1% of your God’s direct designs to evolve humans and their food supply (never eaten one myself, but luckily I've survived so far). That just leaves 99% to be accounted for.

DAVID: Accounted for by the process of evolution, which I fell God conducted.

dhw: Yes, all life forms are accounted for by the process of evolution. And you have your God designing every one of them, and…hallelujah! – you have no idea why your God would have chosen your method of designing millions of life forms that had no connection with humans (and their food supply) in order to design humans and their food supply.

Your usual distortion of evolution as conducted by God. You don't know His reasons either. Why should I? I'm simply following known history of evolution

Theoretical origin of life:
DAVID: The Shapiro who is my hero is Robert. See my bold. His book, Origins is from 1986 and he could easily see the problems in trying to understand the origin of life, about which we are obviously no closer to a reasonable theory. His book is one of the first I read to divorce myself from Darwin. I've not presented the lengthy descriptions of all the current attempts to make an advance, just the obvious frustrations of the reviewing author. This problem is why I think it is a major proof of the need for a designer God.

dhw: I don’t think you need to be a brilliant scientist to “see the problems in trying to understand the origin of life”. Nor do you have to be a brilliant philosopher to see the problems in trying to understand how the mystery of life’s origin can be solved by attributing it to an unknown inventor who never had an origin.

And yet you are always puzzled by the need for a designer. It is a problem you will never get around.