More miscellany Part One (Evolution)

by dhw, Monday, August 12, 2024, 09:09 (35 days ago) @ David Turell

“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.

DAVID: 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.

Now you have switched from the time involved to the question that nobody can answer. I will stick to theistic theories, since we both reject chance. If you believe in an unknown, sourceless, eternal, omnipotent, omniscient, conscious mind, there is no reason to suppose that it is incapable of inventing a mechanism which will respond intelligently to all new conditions. Intelligent cells may combine their intelligences to innovate as well as to adapt. You say your God creates new types. So he is perfectly capable of giving cells the ability to create new types. Darwin wrote: “How a nerve comes to be sensitive to light, hardly concerns us more than how life itself originated” – and this may be said to sum up the whole process. ALL the innovations could have sprung from the original intelligence with which your God endowed the first cells, increasing in complexity as one innovation followed another, according to what was needed or allowed by changing conditions. No foresight involved.

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)

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

dhw: The 0.1% surviving provide all the ecosystems we have now. [Their purpose is a matter of conjecture, though the common purpose of all species in all ecosystems is survival.]

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.

DAVID: Your alternatives fit a human-type God.

See the “evolution” thread for your self-contradictory, schizophrenic views on human attributes.

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.

DAVID: 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%.

He did not say the extinct 99.9% “produced” the surviving 0.1%! This is what you told us:
DAVID (April 21st): His study was to explain why extinctions happened as a necessary part of evolution. He concluded 'bad luck'. Well-adapted species suddenly were unprepared for new circumstances. The losses cumulatively were 99.9% with 0.1% as survivors.

New circumstances killed off 99.9%, and 0.1% were the survivors. Only the survivors could go on to “produce” descendants. You agreed, as bolded, and the dinosaur example illustrates the point. Please stop contradicting yourself.