More miscellany Part One (Evolution)

by David Turell , Sunday, August 11, 2024, 15:44 (102 days ago) @ dhw

“De novo” (The Cambrian)

DAVID: The rocks show a transition timed period between Ediacaran and Cambrian. In that period is the phenotypical gap we agree upon. That speciation went on all during the Cambrian after the gap is beside the point. It doesn't defuse the Gap. That time period is too short for such changes to have happened naturally (chance mutation).

dhw: I am not defending chance mutation. I am pointing out that if (possibly God-given) intelligent cells produced the innovations, the time factor becomes as irrelevant as it is if you opt for God doing the job himself.

How do cells invent brains or eyes? By design which involves the foresight of understanding the desired goal by then creating new non-existing types of cells.

God’s imperfect system

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.

DAVID: Not irrelevant. They create the diversity needed for today's human supporting ecosystems.

dhw: No they don’t. You have agreed that only 0.1% of all the creatures that ever lived were the ancestors of those that are alive today. (See below)

The 0.1% surviving ARE the necessary Earth's ecosystem to support a burgeoning human population.

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

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

dhw: “Cull” = deliberate killing. Progressive innovations made the now extinct ancestors redundant. A free-for-all would not involve deliberately designed mistakes that must be deliberately killed. And divine experimentation for the sake of making new discoveries would not require your God knowingly to make mistakes and to have to rectify them in the imperfect, inefficient manner you impose on him.

DAVID: You defined culling in a nice way. But, the same result appeared.

dhw: Culling is not a “nice” way. It means deliberate killing. My alternatives do not require the imperfect inefficiency you impose on your schizophrenically perfect, efficient |God.

Your alternatives fit a human-type God

99.9% versus 0.1%

DAVID: 99.9% are their ancestors. No contradiction of my view.

dhw: You simply keep repeating this, although you have explicitly disagreed with yourself***, as well as offering a totally absurd misinterpretation of the dinosaur example.as above. The ancestors of current species came from the 0.1% of species that continued to survive extinction until they eventually evolved into the current 0.1% of all that ever lived. Please stop contradicting yourself.

*** dhw: Do you believe that we and our food are directly descended from 99.9% of all the creatures that ever lived?
DAVID: No. From 0.1% surviving.

DAVID: But indirectly from the 99.9% who went extinct.

dhw: How can 696 dinosaur species which had no descendants nevertheless have been indirect ancestors of current life forms? Only 4 species of dinosaur have current descendants. This discussion should have ended with your bolded agreement.

A tiny segment of evolution does not fit the overall statistics. Raup simply said 99.9% went extinct to produce the current surviving 0.1%.