More miscellany Parts One & Two (Evolution)

by dhw, Thursday, September 12, 2024, 12:10 (7 days ago) @ David Turell

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.

DAVID: Design is obvious. A designer is very feasible.

Agreed. But although that feasibly solves the mystery of life’s origin, it creates a different mystery: how – if for example our consciousness requires design – can a supreme form of consciousness exist without having been designed?

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.

DAVID: All part of ecosystems supporting us.

So explosive rucksacks, zombified flies etc. support us by being part of what supports us. Not much of an explanation, is it?

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.)

DAVID: No. See evolution thread.

You continue to agree that God might enjoy creating, but you insist that he can’t enjoy creating, and you never contradict yourself although you acknowledge that your beliefs are schizophrenic,

dhw: Perhaps, then, you might one day consider alternatives that are less self-contradictory than your own?

DAVID: Accept your humanized God? Never.

You agree that your God might have created us with thought patterns and emotions like his own, but you will never accept a God with thought patterns and emotions like our own. All part of your schizophrenic beliefs.

Cetacean spinal changes

dhw: […] 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.)

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

Agreed. But I must confess I find this explanation more feasible than your "ponder" concerning your God’s preprogramming or dabbling and then having to cull 99.9 of 100 species irrelevant to his purpose, and requiring millions of generations and itty-bitty stages in order to get the species he wants. Shapiro’s theory would eradicate all those problems. […]

DAVID: Only if it were real and worked.

We agree that no one knows! We can only compare the feasibility of each theory.

Bipedalism and savannahs

QUOTE: "I am in two minds about this study. On the one hand, it does indicate that savannahs expanded while dense forests shrank – which would have pushed apes and hominins out onto the grasslands. On the other hand, the timings don’t really match. Remember, we don’t see decent evidence of bipedality until 6 million years ago: why so late, if the savannahs began expanding 9 million years earlier? Likewise, we don’t see hominins living in truly open grassland until as recently as 2 million years ago."

DAVID:: the savannah theory skips the point that things happen slowly over time. There is no sudden appearance of vast grasslands forcing an immediate upright posture.

We're talking about events that happened millions of years ago, and the article talks exclusively of forests and savannahs. Nobody knows how, when or where bipedalism actually began, but why must we think so generally? Bipedalism could have originated in one local area, where for whatever reason, a particular group of tree-dwellers could no longer survive in the trees. Do we have a detailed history of every inch of African forests and savannahs to know for sure what landscape existed there 9 or 6 or even 2 million years ago? New fossils are being discovered all the time, changing our views of who, when and where (see your post today about a new Neanderthal type). Your own theory was that your God operated on a particular group and then told them to leave the trees. Also a localized event. I propose that at some time in the distant past, local conditions forced tree-dwellers out of their trees. There is no reason why the descendants of those successful bipedal hominids should not have gone on to explore and live in other environments, including forests. They would have gone wherever they could make a living!

Two Neanderthal types

QUOTE: […] "an adult male’s partial skeleton discovered in France contains genetic clues to a Neanderthal line that evolved apart from other European Neanderthals for around 50,000 years."

Sensational new fossils are being discovered almost monthly, throwing doubt on established theories. Who knows what revolutionary discoveries might be made in, say, the next thousand years?