Return to David's theory of evolution PART 1 (Evolution)

by dhw, Monday, June 13, 2022, 12:46 (892 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: It is not history 1) that humans (plus food supply) were God’s one and only goal from the start of life, and 2) that God individually designed every life form (and food supply), and did so as “an absolute requirement” for his design of human (plus food supply).

DAVID: Of course it is not history!! It is an interpretation of God's created evolution history.

And if God exists, it is an interpretation which apparently makes no sense to anyone but God. I suggest that a theory which makes no sense to you or me might just possibly be wrong – especially when there are alternatives which fit in perfectly with the history of life as we know it. [...]

DAVID: What you refuse to accept is I fully believe God does it any way He wishes and I don't need to queston it or satisfy your confusion about how God did it (His reasoning) as I view God.

If God exists, I fully accept that he would run evolution “any way he wishes”, and I have offered various alternative versions of his wishes and his methods of fulfilling his wishes. As you view God, he had one wish, and fulfilled it by deliberately not fulfilling it until he had created all sorts of things that had no connection with his one wish. And you have no idea why.

Ediacaran-Cambrian transition: 410,000 years

dhw: I didn’t know that one peer-reviewed article in one major journal indicated the establishment of a universally accepted truth, but it really doesn’t matter.

DAVID: Yes it does. What do you think peer-review entails? A review by several established recognized experts in the specific field.

I’m not disputing the findings, but I’ve got used to the fact that “recognized experts in the field” often disagree with one another, and since this is a brand new article, I thought there might be other views. In the abstract, it says:

"The replacement of the late Precambrian Ediacaran biota by morphologically disparate animals at the beginning of the Phanerozoic was a key event in the history of life on Earth, the mechanisms and the time-scales of which are not entirely understood[/b].”

Possible leeway? 411,000 years perhaps?

dhw: The gap between Ediacaran and Cambrian is irrelevant to our discussion of the “gaps” in the fossil record.

DAVID: It is very relevant. Such a huge change in animal forms in such a short period doesn't fit the usual timing of a speciation change as in the whale series.

First of all, how fully developed are the new forms? And secondly, even 410,000 years is a long time in terms of generations, and it is generations that create new species, not time. You yourself wrote:

DAVID: The true answer to how long speciation takes is unknown. The many gaps don't tell us.

Once again, the argument revolves round missing fossils, not around time:

DAVID: The gaps as missing fossils is a theory not supported by the Camrian research now that soft tissue fossils are turning up and Cambrian fossilsae being found all over the world as the gap remains.

So it is far from true to claim that there are no more fossils to be found – they are turning up all the time. And discoveries that indicate rudimentary brains and nervous systems and possibly sex existing long before the Cambrian would seem to indicate continuity rather than de novo speciation.

Punctuated trilobites
DAVID: The grasper organ found in trilobites is Cambrian, and presumes a penis. The bold is your pure invention. I did mention Edicarans are thought to be simple animals, so they possibly had sexual reproduction, but as sessile forms, sperm would have to float over to find an egg somehow. In Cambrian reproduction intromission is assumed. Your theoretical struggles show their rigidity.

dhw: You are right, my bold goes too far, as you said that Ediacaran animals “could have had” sex, not “did have”. However, the article on neuropeptides showed us that precursors to the fully developed Cambrian forms (brains and nervous systems) existed earlier, thus confirming the concept of continuity. And if the same “could have” applied to sexual reproduction, the theory of continuity can hardly be dismissed as wild. [You wrote: How does a sex organ discovery support your wild theory that dispenses with the Cambrian gap?]

DAVID: As you have just proven my theory, thank you! The true continuity of evolution is the ever- developing complexity of living biochemistry, as I have stated. Jumps in forms (gaps) are made possible by new biochemical proteins, as the neuropeptides example. Your education has advanced far beyond Darwin!

It certainly has, and Darwin would have been delighted at this vindication of his theory. If rudimentary brains and nervous systems and sexual reproduction already existed long before the Cambrian, what you call the “jumps” are nothing like as jumpy as you have made them out to be, even to the point of your claiming that the Cambrian produced species without any precursors (the exact opposite of continuity).