More "miscellany" PARTS ONE & TWO (General)

by dhw, Friday, September 15, 2023, 11:38 (20 days ago) @ David Turell

Speciation

DAVID: Some species arrive with non-useful-now abilities that will be used later.

Abilities are not the physical structures that distinguish one species from another. Those structures may allow for future new actions, but the species will only change if the existing structures can’t cope with future requirements. You agree that speciation takes place when required, and not before required, and so intelligent cells would not need a crystal ball in order to speciate. Enough!

MICROBIOME (Back to theodicy)

DAVID: I repeat. My view are mine alone, totally consistent with ID.

dhw: As your views are yours alone, you can hardly attack my alternatives on the grounds that they are mine alone! You are quite right that your views concerning design are consistent with the theory of intelligent design. So are all my theistic alternatives. What is obviously not supported by ID is your unique theory that your God designed all species for the sole purpose of designing us plus food, although 99.9% were irrelevant to us plus food.*** Stop dodging.

DAVID: ID assumes God designed all of evolution. Not different than my theory.

Read the bold.

Early pre-humans

DAVID: Raup's luck is true.

dhw: Then your God relied on luck to preserve the 0.1% of species relevant to his one and only purpose. Great planning!

DAVID: Raup referred to organism's luck in surviving. God knew what species would die so He could replace them with advanced forms.

dhw: Bang goes your God’s control of evolution. All he can do is react to events over which he has no control. Then he replaces the 99.9 irrelevant species with a whole lot of new irrelevant species until they also get blown away, and he can design more irrelevant species and so on. No wonder you regard his method as messy, cumbersome and inefficient.

DAVID: The Cambrian answers your straw man illogical premise. God designed as God needed to. He didn't mind how long it took.

Your belief that your God created Cambrian species “de novo” denotes that he could have designed us directly if he'd wanted to, but for unknown reasons he either chose or was forced to use the method bolded above.***.

DAVID: Your 'Irrelevant species' are our food.

We cannot eat species which don’t exist, and those which do exist are descended from 0.1% of the species he designed. The rest were irrelevant.

DAVID: […] An evolutionary process, by definition, produces losses and gains.

dhw: The only evolution of life that we know of has produced losses and gains. If your God invented evolution, do you think he defined it as “a process which will force me to design 99.9 species that will have no relevance to my one and only purpose and which chance must get rid of”?

DAVID: Thankfully God never noticed your distorted take. [...]

What have I distorted? If you can’t make sense of your bolded theory***, maybe it’s wrong.

1) All animals have parasites 2) How plants changed the planet 3) dhw's obsession with 'humans plus food'; current studies

dhw: Once more, thank you for these highly educational articles. No thanks, however, for your continued attempts to divert attention from your illogical theory of evolution*** by insulting me.

DAVID: I'm only presenting clarity to dissipate your fog of weird premises.

None of these articles have anything to do with your bolded theory*** or with any of my logical alternatives to it.

3) DAVID: this article shows how we dominate the planet and how we use much of the bush of life for our purposes, food supply and otherwise.

dhw: […] Please stop pretending that our mismanagement of the environment has anything to do with my objections to your nonsensical theory of evolution***.

DAVID: The 'mismanagement' simply shows us how fine the line is between sufficiency of food supply and insufficiency.

So what has that got to do with your illogical theory of evolution***, and what is supposed to be my “obsession”?

Horizontal transfer

DAVID: [Bacteria] can extensively edit their own DNA. Other single cells as part of multicellular organisms have specific consigned duties to perform, actively manufacturing proteins and other molecules or monitoring levels of oxygen in the hypothalamus or sodium in the kidney. They do not edit their own DNA.

You always state this with authority, but even your God would have had to edit DNA in order to produce evolutionary innovations. If he can do it (and bacteria can do it), why can’t his specially designed invention have done it?
I’m always intrigued by stem cells as a possible key to our understanding of how evolution works.

Encyclopedia Britannica
https://www.britannica.com/science/stem-cell
Stem cell | Definition, Types, Uses, Research, & Facts

stem cell, an undifferentiated cell that can divide to produce some offspring cells that continue as stem cells and some cells that are destined to differentiate (become specialized). Stem cells are an ongoing source of the differentiated cells that make up the tissues and organs of animals and plants.

So could it be that speciation occurred when stem cells responded to new requirements by forming new organs and/or variations of existing organs with new specialities?