More miscellany Part One (Evolution)

by dhw, Wednesday, August 14, 2024, 08:50 (99 days ago) @ David Turell

“De novo” (The Cambrian)

dhw: […] 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. (First bold is David’s.)

DAVID: Terrible thinking and invoking Darwin's avoidance of reasonable thought is senseless. How do blind cells know eyes are needed? For eyes to appear their need has to be envisioned in foresight!

dhw: Darwin was not dealing with origins. His point was that evolution gradually complexified – from a light sensitive nerve to the eye. Your question applies to every single innovation that has led from bacteria to us, and perhaps I should add to "what is needed or allowed by changing conditions" whatever might be advantageous in the struggle for survival. Over billions of years, every innovation that has led from bacteria to arthropods to humans would have provided some sort of advantage. You have no difficulty in accepting that the cell communities of which we humans are made can innovate without your God’s help. Why, then, do you insist that earlier cell communities could not have done the same – especially if they were designed by your God to do so?

DAVID: The enormous gaps I've presented defy the bolded statement of Darwin you worship. It implies tiny steps for evolution to proceed. There are none!!!, unless you mean minor adaptations.

I have no idea how many steps were needed for a nerve to become sensitive to light, and for a light sensitive nerve to develop into the eyes we and our fellow creatures now have. Flatworm eyes were nothing like as complex as ours, which is why we can talk of gradual complexification. Maybe the flatworm eye was a big jump. You have of course dodged the question why, if God was capable of giving humans the autonomous ability to innovate, he could not have done the same with the cells that started the whole process.

99.9% versus 0.1%

DAVID: 99.9% are their ancestors. No contradiction of my view. (dhw’s bold)

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 […]. 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.
And:
dhw: 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.

DAVID: Weirdly your statement seems to agree with my view. Some parts of the 99.9% extinct produced todays 0.1%.

dhw: Weirdly, you simply keep changing your statements: 1) we and our food are descended from the 0.1% of survivors, and NOT from the 99.9%; 2) 99.9% of extinct life forms are our ancestors; 3) we and our food are descended from some of the 99.9%. Please stop prolonging the agony. As in 1): We and our food are descended from the 0.1% of survivors, and the 99.9% were NOT our ancestors. The exact percentage may be questionable, but the dinosaur example is an accurate reflection of the whole process: 696 of them were NOT our ancestors, and 4 of them were. This discussion should have ended when you first agreed with 1).

DAVID: My view is from Raup. He treated all of evolution as one topic. 99.9% became extinct producing the 0.1% surviving. We are a part of the 0.1% and did came from the 0.1% and represent it in living now.

According to you, he did not say the 99.9% “produced” the 0.1% surviving! Why have you twisted what you wrote?
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.

You have agreed that we are descended from Raup’s 0.1% of survivors. Only survivors can have descendants! See the example of the dinosaurs.