Innovation and Speciation: aquatic mammals avoid bends (Evolution)

by dhw, Sunday, December 13, 2020, 13:06 (1229 days ago) @ David Turell

“Fine tuning of water” and “new extremophiles”
DAVID: 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 are allowed to differ.

dhw: Of course we are, but each of defends his own theories and looks for faults in the reasoning underlying the other’s theories. I have based the above theory on your own beliefs and simply ask why you think it’s not feasible.

DAVID: I simply see we differ in many ways. Why not?

I know we differ. That doesn’t explain why you think the free-for-all theory (unlike the satisfaction theory) is not feasible.

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: 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.

dhw: Nobody knows whether God exists, let alone what his reasons might have been. However, your theory that he taught the turtles to navigate so that they could provide food for the humans who would arrive millions and millions of years later is not part of the known history of evolution.

DAVID: Agreed, but a good way for God to handle things.

Since you agree, perhaps you will now stop pretending that your God’s direct design of every life form as part of the goal of evolving humans and their food supply “follows known history of evolution”. I don’t know by what criteria millions of long dead life forms and food supplies unconnected with humans are a “good” way to handle the purpose of designing H. sapiens and his food supply.

Egnor’s latest
dhw:...please stop pretending that evolution involves gazing into a crystal ball. The theory I have proposed involves REACTING to conditions, not forecasting them. The problem of fossil gaps would be solved if there were a continuous fossil record of every creature that ever lived.

DAVID: The crystal ball is required for animals to jump into aquatic life. They are my strongest argument for design being required.

dhw: I would suggest this is your weakest argument – complexity being your strongest. If an animal sees that there is more food in the water than there is on the land, and it has a better chance of surviving in the water, then it will enter the water. The necessary adaptations will then follow.

DAVID: The problem unsolved is how does that happen. I'll stick with God designing.

dhw: Of course nobody knows how the process of adaptation/innovation works. That is why we have theories. My closing comment on your theory was: “I find it quite absurd to picture an animal happily munching its supper on the seashore, dozing off, and then finding that its legs have turned into fins, and a voice says “Go thou into the water!” What other way do you think he might have designed the process?

DAVID: We know the whale series has nine stages, so it wasn't after one long dream, but a series of dramatic changes requiring design. You cannot escape the need for design and you haven't, sitting on your fence.

So now you have your God conducting nine lots of operations on pre-whales instead of just the one, and you think this makes your theory more feasible. I suggest that each change was designed by the intelligent cell communities finding new ways of adapting to life in the water and thereby improving the pre-whale’s chances of surviving. Nothing to do with sitting on my agnostic’s fence. Just a process I find considerably more likely than your God stepping in to perform nine different operations before he gets the whale he wanted, although actually he only wanted humans anyway.