hyksos » August 6th, 2018, 8:15 pm wrote:[quote="[url=http://www.sciencechatforum.com/viewtopic.php?p=338936#p338936]
Serpent says
"No steps, no stages." , then turns around literally 2 sentences later and says these details regarding resources are due to our
"technology not evolution". By his admittance, technology is therefore a STAGE, contradicting his earlier assertion of "No steps, no stages".
Is therefore a STAGE? A product, yes. A side-effect, yes. Where does STAGE come from? The only way you can justify that allegation is if I had at any time accepted an ascension theory of evolution. I have not.
consider that all evolution (even at micro populations) proceeds in steps and stages.
Consider that those crises are not responsible for all of evolution but only for the occasional and uncharacteristic spurt in the development of isolated species under stress. That would not invalidate ordinary gradual adaptation and selection.
Primates absolutely have evolved hands for grasping branches, rotating shoulder bones for swinging from branches, and perhaps more importantly powerful color stereo vision for dwelling on branches without falling off. The very bone joint in our upper arms are a direct descended trait from our ancestral species that dwelled in the trees of ancient forests.
How does this require that
trees cover the entire landmass? Did nothing else exist at the same time - just trees and monkeys? Was there no room anywhere on the planet for a few crocodile, some antelopes and an acre or two of grassland with crickets?
What makes tree
saturation crucial to the formation of a joint?
I am not budging on this assertion: Dense tall forest was absolutely required to have been pre-existing far prior to the emergence of and evolution of primates.
Okay. Have your dense tall forest. Nobody says they didn't exist or that they didn't contribute to arboreal primate development.
Therefore there existed a STAGE of life on earth in which trees existed,
They still do. But they don't fill up the whole land-mass, and never needed to. For a departure in species lifestyle, you only need the presence of trees in a region where that species already exists.
saturated the ecosystems, and not a single primate was on them.
Something was on them. Chipmunks, birds, ants, snails, dryads...
At that STAGE OF TIME, primates had not even evolved yet and weren't even close to coming on the scene.
So? Where there are trees, tree-dwellers thrive, diversify, find their niches. Some develop into successful big-brains, some develop into successful little-brains; some are less successful and go extinct.
Are you saying that primates "suddenly" burst into existence as a response to trees?
Why can't you imagine pre-primates running around on the ground? Rats still do, and they've got thumbs and incredibly flexible skeletons. So do lizards, and they can also live on rocks and under stuff. Some little mouse ran up a tree for safety, liked it, built a house up there, brought home his bride and had many little arboreal rodents that eventually diversified into marmosets and lemurs.
Up until 600 million years ago, all life on earth was single-celled bacteria. What does that mean? It means that there was a STAGE in history where all life on the surface of this planet was single-celled bacteria. That STAGE lasted 2.9 billion years.
Well, it's hard, slow work, terraforming Terra. That PERIOD lasted 2.9 billion years.
Something suddenly happened at 600 mya that kicked off multicellularity.
Some life form must have SATURATED some place?
Maybe.
Or else, conditions changed, perhaps due to a cosmic event, perhaps due to a chemical or thermal tipping-poit on the earth's surface. Things that happen suddenly are usually extinctions and catastrophes, which means that whatever is capable of a major alteration in its habits and responses has a better chance of surviving than all the organisms that are less able to adapt. We've already been through this one with Wolfhund and bacteria. Of course, "sudden" may be a hundred thousand years, which is quite a lot of bacterial lifetimes - it's hard to put precises time-stamps on events in the remote past.
That time must have been ... a STEP from an earlier paradigm.
That time could have been a DIVERGENCE or a DEPARTURE from or a VARIATION on the earlier paradigm.
Calling it a step presumes that all of evolution happens in this way and invites the assumption that it is "supposed" or "meant" to happen in this way. It doesn't. It happens chronologically and there is a terrific temptation to think of
now as the top of all the time that's gone before; where it's all been headed. Really, it's just a point on a line.
These exceptional events may be significant from a particular (anthropocentric) POV, and are certainly dramatic, but are far from the whole story of life.