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

by David Turell , Friday, March 05, 2021, 15:25 (1142 days ago) @ dhw

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.

dhw: ...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.

But this not ever explain, why vast overcapacity is created. You always ignore that point.

dhw: 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...

Complexification works because the huge brain had no need for further expansion. You explanation is a twisted escape from a logical view of the obviously anticipatory expansion.

survival

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

dhw: 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?

Same weird twist. God chose to design/evolve all living forms with humans as His final goal.

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.

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

Simple. God guarantees survival wherever life tries to exist. Survival does not drive evolution

Symbiosis by bacteria

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

dhw: 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.

Life simply goes from one generation to the next, survival of forms guaranteed by God's designs.

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.

dhw: 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.

You have possums conceptualizing necessary time intervals. How very sentient of them! I'll stick with God's help.