Making new evolutionary innovations: bat wings (Introduction)

by dhw, Sunday, May 11, 2025, 08:46 (11 days ago) @ David Turell

QUOTE: "At Evolution News, Behe said that bat wing evolution was unexplained by neo-Darwinian processes alone. He wrote, “The killer question is, what could build cool new features, such as bats flying or whales living in the ocean? What could drive the construction of animals that had never before been seen on earth?” Evolution, unlike intelligent design, can’t explain those things, and Behe was right.”

dhw: It always astonishes me that these people never mention Shapiro’s theory of evolution, which blends Darwin’s theory of common descent with the concept of cellular intelligence. Animals and organs that had never before been seen on earth would have evolved through intelligent cell communities cooperating in response to new conditions, either by adaptation or by innovation. Bat wings are variations on the forelimbs of other animals, as are whales’ flippers. The lack of transitional fossils is hardly surprising, given the fact that tens if not hundreds of millions of years have passed, and each new fossil is regarded as a kind of miracle.

DAVID: Let's take bat wings. They must be designed for easy flight in the future. dhw wants a bodies' cells to imagine the future flights and make the legs into wings. Yes, cells act intelligently in their functional activities guided by instructions in their DNA. It does not make them designers for future function.

I’m not surprised that you prefer the bat example. We are lucky enough to have sufficient fossil evidence to trace the history of whales. Apparently it took them approximately 50 million years to adapt fully to life in the water. 50 million years would cover…how many…five million generations? The oldest bat fossils also go back about 50 million years, and so any pre-bat fossils would need to have survived well over 50 million years. Their basic skeletal structure is the same as that of other mammals. I don’t think anyone would imagine that 50 million years and one day ago, a mammal suddenly made all the necessary adjustments to turn its limbs into functioning wings – but a possibly leaping animal might gradually transform its leaping anatomy into one that keeps it suspended in the air. There is no planning for the future, any more than the first pre-whales to enter the water would have planned millions of years ahead for the gradual perfection of their anatomies for life in the water. My guess would be that pre-bats gained an advantage from developing their leaping ability, and this eventually followed the same course as whales’ adaptations, with the relevant parts of the anatomy gradually perfecting themselves for flight. You seem to think that only immediate perfection can survive. Of course it’s only speculation on my part, but so is the concept of an unknown sourceless mind specially designing animals de novo (not to mention the rest of your theory of evolution).NOBODY knows the truth, but whatever it may be is mind-boggling!

There are now over 1400 bat species worldwide. I presume you do not believe your God designed each one individually, and indeed on occasions you have accepted the possibility that he gave cells sufficient autonomous intelligence to make what would have been minor changes in response to different conditions. But still you refuse to consider the POSSIBILITY that their intelligence might extend to a gradual improvement leap by leap that would lead to the finished product we know today.