More miscellany Parts One & Two (Evolution)

by David Turell , Wednesday, September 11, 2024, 21:08 (7 days ago) @ dhw

Black holes needed for life

DAVID: That is my belief in the supernatural to explain this reality.

dhw: Yes, I know. And atheists believe in chance to explain this reality. Both of you shut your eyes and take a blind leap of faith with your explanations.

DAVID: Your no faith is better?

dhw: It’s not a question of what is better or best. We are discussing different views, and weighing up how feasible they are.

Design is obvious. A designer is very feasible.

Kamikaze termites

DAVID: All designed are here to support us. Nothing was extraneous during evolution.

dhw: 99.9% of what you call his designs are not here to support us, but do please tell us how explosive rucksacks, zombified flies and weaverbird nests support us.

All part of ecosystems supporting us.

Butterfly wing colors

DAVID: Of course, enjoyment can be a need. God might enjoy anything He creates. Only He knows.

dhw: Of course only he knows. Thank you for now agreeing with yourself that he might enjoy creating, so will you withdraw your rejection of your own proposal on the grounds that he is selfless and is not human in any way? (See the “evolution” thread.)

No. See evolution thread.

DAVID: Our wishes for God do not dictate God's personality. We can accept He creates as a starting point. After that it is all speculation. […] No one knows.

dhw: If he exists, then of course I agree. That is why we can only speculate, and test one another’s speculations. Your own are so contradictory (e.g. he might want to be worshipped but he is selfless) that you have described them as “schizophrenic”. Perhaps, then, you might one day consider alternatives that are less self-contradictory than your own?

Accept your humanized God? Never.

Cetacean spinal changes

DAVID: this shows the amazing number of modifications required for the mammalian spine to support an aquatic lifestyle, all in a 53-million-year period. All of these changes point to purposeful changes in short periods, a strong argument for design.

dhw: The changes are a strong argument for design no matter how long they took and no matter what designed them, and they were clearly designed as adaptations or innovations to improve the organism’s chances of survival in new conditions. You seem to think that 53 million years is a short time, but in terms of generations, you might have, say, 5 million. If you think your God designed them, you might perhaps wonder why he dragged it out over so many different stages. Shapiro proposes that intelligent cell communities design the adaptations and the innovations, and in both cases, it seems perfectly reasonable that the design would keep changing as cell communities improve on their earlier designs in response to new requirements. (Your God may have given them their intelligence.)

Again, you ponder how does speciation happen. No one knows.

The speed of adaptations

DAVID: to think clearly about evolution do not confuse adaptive evolution with speciation. Adaptations can occur very quickly as the article shows. Note my bold. Speciation takes extended time. We currently find species new to us, but we do not see speciation in action, and do not know how it works.

dhw: You are right. Although it is sometimes difficult to distinguish between adaptation and innovation, Darwin’s finches are obviously adaptations. My comments embrace both, and I simply cannot accept the argument that 53 million years would only allow for changes in short periods. You even claim that your God creates species “de novo” when he wants to – so why would he take so long over speciation? As always, we are faced with three choices to explain speciation through innovation: 1) Darwin’s chance mutations, which we both reject; 2) your God inexplicably preprogramming and/or dabbling his 99.9 out of 100 species irrelevant to his one and only purpose, and inexplicably taking millions of generations to do his itty-bitty design of the few species he does want; 3) Shapiro’s theory that it is the cells themselves that do the designing as and when conditions require or allow innovation. This would solve all the problems arising from 2).

Only if it were real and worked.