Let's study ID: giraffe plumbing (Introduction)

by dhw, Thursday, September 30, 2021, 10:49 (1148 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: […] the start of the Cambrian had all sorts of new forms without precursors. The start is the gap. The million of years afterward are window dressing.

dhw: Some say the Cambrian lasted for about 55 million years. Please tell us how many millions of those years do you regard as being the “start”?

dhw: You have not answered this question.

DAVID: Yes I did. In the Grand Canyon layers were precisely demarked. New fossils do not follow that preciseness. The new phyla (as quoted below) appear around the rock change. The new phyla without precursors are the gap. Why can't you accept it if your hero Darwin did?

Of course I accept the gaps! But the Grand Canyon is not the only source of fossils, as you point out below, and there are two problems: 1) the absence of fossils to fill the gaps, and 2) the apparent suddenness of the appearance of some new species. I am proposing that 1) it is unreasonable to expect a full fossil record of every species, and 2) “suddenness” is relative. You say the start of the Cambrian had all sorts of new forms (the article I quoted made it sound rather less prolific), and I asked a simple question: how many millions of years do you regard as being the “start”?

CC300: Cambrian Explosion
www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CC/CC300.html

dhw: No need for me to repeat the quotes, which emphasize the uncertainty surrounding the length of the Cambrian, the fact that many of the phyla appear both pre- and post the Cambrian, and the ongoing complexification that took place from the beginning of the Cambrian onwards.
dhw: Nothing is as clear-cut as you like to make it seem.

DAVID: You keep ignoring the new discoveries. In China many soft forms, even brains and eyes, are newly found. The gap never narrows!!! Base your thinking on what is known, not theoretical absences to cover your unwillingness to accept Gould's gaps.

As I understand it, Gould’s gaps are the long periods of stasis in which species remain unchanged, and instead of Darwin’s gradualism, he argues for sudden bursts of creativity. What is there not to accept? I don’t know his views on the mechanisms, but it seems reasonable to propose that new species came into being – possibly just locally (hence the different sites of discovery) – through responses to changes in the environment. If you add Shapiro’s theory that these changes are made by intelligent cells, you have a complete explanation of how evolution happens. I would add that your God may have designed cellular intelligence.

DAVID: Cells only potential is to do their assigned jobs.

dhw: “Assigned” in what way? Cells potential is quite clearly to change the jobs they do! How else could evolution have taken place? […]

DAVID: Of course cells have new jobs when God does advanced design.

So why do you say “cells only potential is to do their assigned jobs” if your God uses the same cells to perform different jobs?

Magic embryology
QUOTE: "A system with many switches ensures that the system does not easily fail," says Zuniga. "And it gives evolution room for change." Therefore, individual switches have been able to change without significant pressure, and this has played a part in the development of a wide range of extremities during the history of evolution."

DAVID: This system keeps errors to an extreme minimum. The study fits my theory that God sets up programs early in anticipation of future designs of future evolutionary stages.

This is another way of saying that the system allows for both stability and flexibility. Stability preserves species, and flexibility allows for the production of new species. Please tell us if by “programs” you mean your God’s 3.8-billion-year-old individual programmes for every single undabbled evolutionary change (plus econiche, natural wonder etc.) for the whole history of life, or could the system and its many switches refer to a mechanism whereby cell communities could autonomously maintain themselves (stasis) or restructure themselves (speciation)?

Immunity system complexity
DAVID: Immunity appeared during evolution, or there would not have been any evolution. The immune cells have all the instructions they need to meet new invaders.

dhw: […] Please tell us what form these instructions take – a 3.8-billion-year-old library to choose from, or direct dabbling?

DAVID: A baby starts without its own personal antibodies, just those in Mother's colostrum and some general God-given ones. The rest of his life his cells are able to make an entire library of antibodies to all that come along with exceptions like HIV which destroy the ability. From evolution of sapiens, their cells followed fixed instructions to accomplish the tasks. Covid 19 was no unanswerable surprise. The system is more recent in designed evolution than 3.8 byo, and not dabbled based on our knowledge of homo precursors. (dhw’s bolds)

So if the cells have the ABILITY to create their own library as and when new invaders appear, what “fixed instructions” do they follow? You have now dispensed with a 3.8-billion-year-old programme AND with dabbling. Please answer, or please acknowledge that the cells’ ABILITY to create new antibodies in response to new invasions means that they function autonomously, as opposed to following instructions.