More miscellany (Evolution)

by David Turell , Friday, August 09, 2024, 19:16 (38 days ago) @ dhw

“De novo” (The Cambrian)

DAVID: Usefully forgetful: The Cambrian had a fixed beginning. Stick to that. I presented an article which defined the gap starting exactly at the beginning of the Cambrian era, about 400,000 years from the Ediacaran! 53.4 million years is all afterward!

dhw: I’m not sure what we’re discussing. I thought the Ediacaran ended when the Cambrian began (but please remind me what the 400,000 years refer to). The subject is speciation, and my reference was to the Cambrian period during which new species appeared, the “gap” being the lack of fossils between Ediacaran and Cambrian species . As far as I know (correct me if I’m wrong), after the initial explosion new species evolved throughout the Cambrian period in different stages.

The periods are layers of rock. The Ediacaran/Cambrian gap in rock is sharp, as seen in the Grand Canyon. The real gap is the last Ediacarans are simple fronds and the Cambrians are fully formed animals

dhw: My (theistic) point is that instead of your God's “de novo” speciation, he could have given cell communities the ability to design their own novelties. That is the second of the three now bolded alternative explanations.

Back to your wishful Shapiro theory. No one knows how speciation might work.

God’s imperfect system

dhw: In your vain quest to justify what you call your God’s imperfect, messy, inefficient way of achieving what you say is his purpose, you claimed that he had to design and then cull 99.9% of irrelevant species because of some obscure rule that all evolutions require culling.

DAVID: My claim is pure logic! Evolution means developing new forms in steps which leaves old forms behind! That is culling.

dhw: There’s a world of difference between species coming and going as conditions change (Raup says survival is a matter of luck), and an all-powerful, all-knowing designer deliberately creating species which he knows he will have to kill off because they are irrelevant to his purpose.

But that is the true history. Your distortion is everything was relevant to His purpose.

dhw: Why would he invent a rule for himself that demands the design and culling of 99.9% irrelevant species when he’s perfectly capable of direct, “de novo” creation (the Cambrian)? Your answer: because that’s how human evolutions work! By “trial and error”!....

God chose the method He thought best.

DAVID: God created the evolution of life which we know as a history. If you tried to define evolution as you do in a biology class, you would get a fail.

dhw: I have defined evolution as “the process by which living organisms have developed from earlier ancestral forms”.

And how did they develop unless their ancestors went extinct, i.e., culled!!!

99.9% versus 0.1%

DAVID: 99.9% + 0.1% = 100% of all that ever lived. The 99.9%c culled ancestors made the 0.1% surviving. Yes, or no?!

dhw: No. The “culled ancestors” were a minute section of the 100% of all creatures that ever lived, as illustrated by the dinosaur example, in which you thought 696 out of 700 non-avian dinosaurs instead of 4 avian dinosaurs were the ancestors of all current birds! You agreed that we and our food are NOT directly descended from 99.9% of all the creatures that ever lived, but only from 0.1%. When will you stop contradicting yourself?

Raup shows that what is living today is .01% of everything that ever lived. 99.9% are their ancestors. No contradiction of my view.