Miscellany (General)

by dhw, Wednesday, October 06, 2021, 09:09 (1145 days ago) @ David Turell

Survival

DAVID: I've said survival is required prior to each new species.

dhw: And you’ve also said “survival has nothing to do with the appearance of new species”. How can that be true if your God’s motive for changing anatomies was to ensure the survival of the respective organisms?

DAVID: The bold emphasizes my point, God speciates from surviving species, whose survival is guaranteed by His designs of them.

dhw: So in your theory does he or does he not design innovations to improve organisms’ chances of survival? For example, when – according to you – he popped in to operate on pre-whale legs and turn them into flippers, did he or did he not do so to enable them to improve their chances of survival in the water? Please answer directly.

DAVID: Answered over and over: God has animals fit for survival. If they die out before He adds the next modification to form a new species, evolution doesn't work in progressive stages.

And so did your God change pre-whale legs into flippers in order to improve their chances of survival, or not?

Trilobite eyes
QUOTE: An international research team has found an eye system in trilobites of the suborder Phacopina from the Devonian (390 million years B.P.) that is unique in the animal kingdom.
Most trilobites had compound eyes similar to those that are still found in insects today: […]

DAVID: highly designed compound eyes, in a form now used today by insects. Illustrates the design gap in physical forms from Edicaran to Cambrian. From nothing to these eyes with no intermediate steps and able to demonstrate the nerve fibers. The gap cannot be denied.

dhw: Hold on! This exceptional deviation from the norm apparently originated in the Devonian, not the Cambrian, and must therefore have descended from those earlier forms. It is not the form used today by insects, and obviously did not come from nothing with no intermediate steps, since trilobites had already been in existence for approx. 150 million years.

DAVID: Still descended from the Cambrian Explosion.

So what was all that about “From nothing to these eyes with no intermediate steps”?

dhw: 20,000 species, and you pick on one later variation to tell us there’s a gap which we cannot deny. And while you contemplate your response, do please tell us why this particular extinct species of trilobite was necessary for the design of humans and our food.

DAVID: You cannot deny the gap.

I’m not denying the gap in general. I’m simply pointing out that this trilobite was one very late variation out of 20,000 forms of trilobite.

DAVID: It [the gap]is still there, not gone with your theoretical suppositions of excuses.

Of course the gap is still there. But this is not a good example. Why do you use the word “excuse”? Your theory concerning the gap is no more proven than my own proposals (see “Giraffe plumbing”).

DAVID: And trilobites ended up as evolved forms which we eat today. The whole bush is food to feed our huge population.

Your usual self-contradiction. How often must I quote you? “The current bush of food is NOW for humans NOW. There were smaller bushes in the PAST for PAST forms”, and “Extinct life has no role in current time.”