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

by dhw, Friday, March 05, 2021, 11:56 (1357 days ago) @ David Turell

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.

dhw: ... 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.

DAVID: Again no answer to the impression the new-sized brain gives: giant with little to do. All dressed up and no where to go. You can't give a natural reason for 200 cc jumps, producing more capacity than required at the time of the jump.

That is your own theory! It is you who have your God expanding the brain before expansion is required (sapiens was "all dressed up and nowhere to go” 300,000 years before the bigger brain was needed). I keep suggesting that there WERE natural reasons for the jumps (though nobody knows what they were, just as nobody knows how expansion happened): e.g. new ideas, inventions, environmental conditions, discoveries – which required additional capacity. Once that capacity had been acquired through meeting the new requirements, there was stasis until the next set of requirements exceeded the existing capacity. The sapiens expansion would have followed the same pattern: expansion to meet new requirements, and then stasis – but when new requirements arose, the brain increased its ability to complexify, presumably because further expansion would have entailed huge changes to the rest of the anatomy.

survival

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

dhw: 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.

DAVID: No dodge. God designed every advancing level of evolutions complexities, eventually humans.

Still dodging! For the thousandth time: Why would your God have directly designed the brontosaurus, and the millions of other life forms that had no connection with humans, if his only purpose was to design H. sapiens?

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.

dhw: 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: So they could enter a watery environment, a new mode of living, survival not involved.

How does a physical change enabling a life form to live in a new environment not involve surviving in the new environment?

Symbiosis by bacteria

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

dhw: 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.

DAVID: You forgot death is built in to make room, and the bush is big to be eaten for energy.

So your God gave life forms the ability to survive, but he also made sure they didn’t survive. My proposal is that if God exists, he gave them the mechanism for survival, and some succeeded in surviving by adapting or innovating (e.g. the pre-whale’s legs became flippers). The purpose of the adaptations and innovations was to enable the respective life forms to survive. You have agreed that it was NOT in order to advance evolution. So please tell us what other PURPOSE you can think of as the driving force behind the adaptations and innovations. As for the bush, ALL life forms require food, and so they devise new means of getting food or avoiding becoming food, i.e. to SURVIVE.

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.

dhw: 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: to "stay alive", which means to SURVIVE. Like other forms of adaptation, including physical changes that enable organisms to SURVIVE in a changing environment.

DAVID: You didn't answer my questions, but assumed possums could reason, you usual response.

The intelligence of possums IS my answer. And maybe your God designed the intelligence of possums and every other creature that uses strategies, lifestyles or physical adaptations in order to SURVIVE.