Evolution: more genomic evidence of pre-planning (Evolution)

by dhw, Thursday, March 04, 2021, 11:34 (1358 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: having performed the tasks, they [first sapiens] did not have any further new requirements (as in all the earlier stages of expansion) for thousands of years.

DAVID: Again a description of some imagined minor event to create a huge brain, which wasn't used in full capacity for 300,000 years later. You haven't ever answered that obvious problem in logical interpretation.

NOBODY knows the cause of the expansions. All we do know is that the modern brain undergoes changes IN RESPONSE to new requirements. There is even one section of the modern brain that expands. Expansion in response to an unknown requirement followed by a period of no new requirements (as in all past examples of expansion) seems to me to be more logical than an unknown power called God operating on a group of brains 300,000 years before they needed to be expanded.

dhw: in the early days, when complexification could not cope, all relevant sections of the brain would have required extra cells to perform new tasks. Why else would they have expanded?

DAVID: The brain obviously over expanded is my point you never answer, just ignore.

What are you referring to? Shrinkage? Are you saying your God made a mistake, and gave us too big a brain? We dealt with that long ago. After the final expansion, complexification proved so efficient that certain cells were no longer needed.

survival

DAVID: As bacteria have survived through all time of living organisms, why did evolution have to happen?

dhw: […] You argue that evolution did not have to happen, and therefore your God must have made it happen in order to design H. sapiens! I then ask you why he designed all the millions of life forms which did not have to happen and which had no connection with humans, and you dodge the question.

DAVID: No dodge. He chose to evolve, but you refuse to accept that.

That is NOT what I refuse to accept! If he exists, then he chose the system of evolution for whatever may have been his purpose. But that does not mean (a) that he directly designed every species, and (b) that he did so for the sole purpose of designing H. sapiens. That is what you dodge in post after post.

dhw: 2) I don’t see how you can possibly believe that the motive for adaptations is NOT to enable individual species to survive changes in their living conditions, […] Our prime example has always been pre-whale legs turning into flippers, as flippers offer a better chance of survival in the water.

DAVID: I see a different God motive: securing that life does not disappear, the reverse of your thought. Survival never drives evolution.

dhw: […] you try to ignore the fact that life consists of individual living organisms. It is not a being in itself. And individual living organisms adapt for the sole purpose of surviving. You tell us (under “Miscellany”) that flippers are not adaptation but speciation, to “allow mammals into living in water”. Thank you. I would suggest that the flippers therefore improved the whales’ chances of surviving in water. What other purpose did they serve, since you also tell us that they were not an advance but only a “side step” in evolution?

DAVID: Difference: yes all beings adapt to survive, but God made the mechanism of being alive so tough life goes to every dangerous environment and survives. Survival does not drive evolution is my main point behind this discussion, a counter to Darwin theory.

So the purpose of the mechanism your God designed was to enable all beings to survive, but the purpose for doing something is not a driving force? Once more, please tell us what OTHER purpose you think drove your God to design the whales’ flippers.

DAVID: God advances evolution according to his plan; He is the driving force, not survival. He has made sure the 'process of living' survives as shown by extremophiles.

These are not alternatives! The driving force is the motive. Again: What was the driving force behind the - or, if you like, God's -invention of the flipper?

Symbiosis by bacteria

DAVID: just another evidence that life has God-given methods to survive and that survival does not drive evolution.

So God has given life forms all the different means of survival which have led from bacteria to the brontosaurus, the duckbilled platypus and us, but the reason why he gave them the means of survival was not to enable them to survive. (Though oops, 99% of them have not survived.) Just to clarify, though – it’s the quest for survival that drives evolution, not “survival”, which is the hoped-for outcome of the quest.

Playing possum

QUOTE: “Playing dead seems to be a very good way to stay alive.'"

DAVID: How is this learned, since it implies conceptual thinking? How is the length of time that one plays possum determined? Perhaps God designed this mechanism.

I suggest that a particularly clever possum had a great idea, and lots of other life forms cottoned on or had the same idea. The purpose of the strategy: survival. Like other forms of adaptation, including physical changes that enable organisms to survive in a changing environment.