Miscellany: gaps in evolution cause discontinuity (General)

by David Turell , Thursday, June 17, 2021, 18:41 (1046 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: I have asked two questions, neither of which has been answered: 1) Why do you think there should be fossils of organisms that lived 540 million years ago? 2) Please explain why you think 10 million years is not long enough for innovations to be designed by intelligent cells combining their intelligences to restructure themselves under new conditions.

The gap is complexity , not time. After over 150 years of hunting the gap persists, the fossils are not there.

dhw: I am waiting for you and others to say why you dismiss or ignore Shapiro’s “excellent work”. There are/were notable scientists who also firmly believe/believed in cellular intelligence, and you have never explained why you think your God is incapable of designing the cellular intelligence that Shapiro believes designed the “novelties” of speciation.

God is capable of whatever He wishes to create. All we know from Shapiro is bacteria and now I have presented some of our cells can edit DNA. This does not mean speciation comes this way. His reasonable theory awaits confirmation. Remember it is not fact.

QUOTE:"The fossils were found during a field research in the Qaidam Basin in July 2020…”

dhw: Thank you for proving my point. New discoveries are being made all the time. No one can possibly claim that what fossils we have are all that we shall ever have.

All of the new fossils support the complexity gap. All you can do is hope with Darwin

DAVID: More of the same. Simple fronds which are some form of animal. Sure are enigmatic. They look nothing like the animals we know.

dhw: We know the Cambrian produced new forms! We don’t know what triggered the Cambrian, or how ANY speciation takes place. Even Blechly acknowledges that in this sense, the Cambrian is not unique.

No matter how you wish it, the Cambrian is a giant leap in complexity

QUOTE: "In biogeography, evolutionists appeal to unlikely and speculative explanations where species must raft across vast oceans in order for common descent to account for their unexpected locations.”

dhw: How about convergent evolution as an explanation? And at what stages of evolution did the relevant land masses drift apart?

Those studies have been done, and I've presented some here in the long ago past. Similar monkeys in both Africa and So. America come to mind.

QUOTE: "Paleontology fails to reveal the continuous branching pattern predicted by common ancestry, and the fossil record is dominated by abrupt explosions of new life forms.”

dhw: We cannot expect a continuous fossil record. But in any case, a major change in conditions will require a swift response. There are three possible responses: extinction, adaptation (short term, in order to survive), innovation (to exploit new conditions and econiches, and thereby improve long-term chances of survival). “Abrupt explosions” are covered by Gould’s “punctuated equilibrium”: long periods of stasis until new conditions require or allow new developments.

Gould described the many gaps.

DAVID: Want more proof?

dhw: Proof of what? One moment you desperately try to prove that all forms of life are “part of the goal of evolving [= designing] humans” and therefore evolution is a continuous process from bacteria to us, and now you are triumphantly telling us there is no continuity.

The point is the gaps require a designer.

dhw: Let me summarize some of the main points:
1) the history of the bush of life shows countless branches of life forms that have no connection with each other. Only one led from bacteria to humans. This makes nonsense of the claim that every life form was “part of the goal of evolving [= designing] humans” plus food supply.
2) We cannot expect a complete fossil record of every life form that ever lived. Each discovery is a major event.
3) There is no need to spend all this time on proving that there are gaps. No one knows the causes of speciation in general, let alone the “explosion” of species during the Cambrian. We have nothing but theories. Your God’s pre-planning or personal dabbling is one theory for which there is no proof. Darwin’s random mutations seem to both of us to be unlikely in view of the complexities involved. Shapiro’s theory of cellular intelligence interacting with new environmental conditions makes perfect sense, but there is no proof.
4) Ten million years is an enormous expanse of time in terms of generations of intelligent organisms adapting to or exploiting new conditions. Ignoring Shapiro's theory does not invalidate it.

Again the gap is not time. It is sudden massive complexity.