Innovation and Speciation: aquatic mammals avoid bends (Evolution)

by dhw, Monday, December 14, 2020, 18:04 (1438 days ago) @ David Turell

Fine tuning of water” and “new extremophiles”
DAVID: I simply see we differ in many ways. Why not?

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

DAVID: It creates a concept of God I do not accept.

Your non-acceptance does not explain why the theory is not feasible.

Sea turtles
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.

dhw: 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.

DAVID: Your same old complaint. For me God creates all. History tells us what He did, and I've told you why I think His results have logical reasons.

No you haven’t. When asked why your God would have directly designed all those non-human life forms, econiches, natural wonders etc., you replied that you had no idea.

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.
And:
dhw: 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.

dhw: 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.

DAVID: Each step required complicated designs. I'll stick with the obvious need for a designer God.

So your God stepped in nine times to perform operations, even after the animal had entered the water. Sounds like he’s making it up as he goes along. And all this because he wanted to design H. sapiens – another series of operations, with a leggy twiddle here, and a pelvis twiddle there, and brain surgery over and over again. I’m not surprised that you have no idea why an always-in-total-control God would have used such methods.

Venus fly trap
QUOTES: Based on the number of action potentials triggered by the prey animal during its attempts to free itself, the carnivorous plant estimates whether the prey is big enough—whether it is worth setting the elaborate digestion in motion.
"'In the process, we noticed that the fingerprint of the genes active in the hair differs from that of the other cell types in the trap," says Schulz.

DAVID:: A highly complex system that must have been designed. The insect is digested by powerful enzymes. This means when the enzymes were developed a protection for the tissues of the trap must have been designed also. Not by chance.

There is clearly no end to the versatility of the cell. It could have been designed to create the countless number of life forms that have come and gone, or still exist, in a constantly changing free-for-all,

Far out cosmology
QUOTES:"...no matter how big our Universe actually is, that doesn’t mean it’s the only one. Even if the Universe is infinite, there can be others; remember that some infinities are bigger than others.
"If “nothing” is the nothingness of empty space, but empty space started off in an inflationary state, not only will it give rise to a Universe like ours, but an extraordinarily large (and possibly infinite) number of independent Universes will arise as well. Each one will be filled with its own particles, antiparticles, radiation, and whatever forms of energy are allowed."

I’m afraid I’m inclined to switch off when I read such comments. How can infinity have various sizes? How can nothing turn into a universe of different materials? And why “multiverses”? If the universe is infinite, it can contain countless numbers of galaxies and solar systems and empty spaces and whatever you can think of. What does he mean, then, by the word “universe”?