Return to David's theory of evolution PART 2 (Evolution)

by dhw, Monday, June 13, 2022, 12:54 (892 days ago) @ David Turell

Human membrane pore

DAVID: You may accept design theory, but totally ignore the import of irreducible complexity. All newly appearing cell forms most come complete with all functions intact and operating. Without that arangement, it won't work.

dhw: I presume you are now talking about adaptation and innovation, in which cells take on new forms, and of course they must work. When conditions change, many life forms die. Survival depends on the flexibility of cells to change their structure.

DAVID: From your amorphous wandering answer, I still don't know whether you undersand irreducable complexity and its full import as a concept, or you don't wish to accept it.

I accept the concept of irreducible complexity in relation to the cell as a living, sentient, reproducing, flexible and intelligent entity – and that includes its ability to respond to different conditions by changing its forms. I don’t know why you think my comment constitutes an amorphous wandering answer. What is your objection to it?

DAVID: […] The thought that simple living cells can forsee the future and design for it to create the known gaps in the fossil record ( as the Cambrian) is preposterous.

dhw: I don’t know how many times I have to repeat that in my theory cells do not foresee the future! They respond to conditions in their present: either they die, or they adapt (both proven) or they exploit the new conditions by designing new ways of using them (innovation, but not proven). [I should have added that living cells are far from simple! But I thought you knew that.]

DAVID: I fully know your strained theory about cell's abilities. For new forms able to handle new needs in their future, theories about the future must exist to create new design.

They are NOT new needs in their future, but new needs (and new opportunities) in the present. Cells/cell comunities respond to new conditions – they do not anticipate them.

Ediacaran-Cambrian transition: 410,000 years

DAVID: I'm sick of this twisting of the gap importance by dhw finding old comments about it.

Next you’ll be telling us all palaeontologists believe that during the Cambrian, God created new, fully developed species that had no precursors. Yet again: the shortening of the gap between Ediacaran and Cambrian is irrelevant to the arguments that explain the gaps in the fossil record, which remain just as valid in 2022 as in 2019.

DAVID: The abstract of the article itself follows. The whole article is behind a paywall:
https://doi.org/10.1111/ter.12368
QUOTE: […] The extremely short duration of the faunal transition from Ediacaran to Cambrian biota within less than 410 ka supports models of ecological cascades that followed the evolutionary breakthrough of increased mobility at the beginning of the Phanerozoic." (David’s bold)

DAVID: this measurement of the gap is very significant, not irrelevant!!

Answered above and in Part 1.

Entropy

QUOTE: "The idea of Earth being a self-regulating ecosystem was co-discovered by James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis in the 1970s, and it became known as the Gaia hypothesis. The takeaway for us is that the flow of negative entropy exists not only for individual living things, but for the entire Earth. (David’s bold)

DAVID: Note my bold for an important view of the importance of ecosystems. Ecosystems ae balanced to maindtain lkife in general. Note dhw disparages them as food. One role is tooffer food for all.

You never cease to misrepresent my view of ecosystems. Every ecosystem serves to maintain life, and provides food for all the organisms within it. But that does not mean that every ecosystem and every organism in the whole history of life on Earth was specially designed as an “absolute requirement” in preparation for us humans and our food. Please stop this silly attempt to distract attention from the illogicality of your anthropocentric theory of evolution.

I am very taken with the idea of Earth being a self-regulating ecosystem – a kind of macrocosm for all the microcosmic ecosystems that come and go. And it is very relevant indeed to our current concerns over climate change, as we humans are constantly interfering with the macrocosmic ecosystem. Incidentally, the far-sight Lynn Margulis was also a champion of the theory that cells are intelligent.