Let’s recall that Bechly’s model is of divinely guided saltations. The magnitude of a saltation, or even the average magnitude, is never specified, so any intermediates are neither expected nor unexpected and therefore can’t be used as evidence against the model. Some sort of intermediates are implied by saltationary common descent. At most, some particular hypothesis of the size of a particular saltation event can be tested.
Now @giltil, on the other hand, is apparently a creationist, a believer in separate created kinds, and so at odds with Bechly. Only the big tent keeps them together. But he has the same problem: until we can identify “kinds”, there can be no testable hypotheses.
See here. Bechly replied to my reference to sea otters with a comment about the genus Lutra, which are not sea otters,. Either he doesn’t know the difference, or he wasn’t paying enough attention.
I see that Bechly foresaw my challenge regarding the 'akiapola’au and other Hawaiian honeycreepers. Turns out they don’t qualify:
That was from Bechly’s ENV response about the silverswords. And so we see that “body plan” is vague enough to encompass (or, more importantly, fail to encompass) whatever Bechly likes. Whales? New body plan, for sure, because reasons. Honeycreepers, same old same old because, again, reasons.
Among the 350,000 described fossil species, we can identify numerous abrupt origins of new body plans within a 5–10 million years window of time. Among an estimated 8.7 million recent species we find no such body plan disparity in any pairs of species that diverged in a similar time frame according to molecular clock studies. This contradicts expectations from a Darwinian perspective.
Disregarding for a moment the nonsensical nature of the challange since he never provides any rigorous criteria for how to determine what counts as a sufficient disparity, what is this “expectation from a Darwinian perspective” he speaks about? As far as I can determine it seems Bechly claims that evolution should always be sort of “trying” to adapt any species to any radically different niche, and there can be no reason conceived of for why particular large-scale transitions don’t constantly occur.
While on that last note we could ask the same question for any design theory, why doesn’t the magical designs keep happening but are all relegated to the ancient historical past?
The divine guidance theory is a subset of the ID theory, which posits the action of an intelligent designer for some objects or phenomena. In the case of grandiose works such as cathedrals, it takes a lot of time to build them. But arrive a time when the work is nearly finished and when only details remain to be fix. The same situation applies to the building of life on earth, the most grandiose work one can imagine.
Note also that the idea that most of the work regarding the building of life is now done is consilient with the story of Genesis that told us that God rested on the 7th day.
The work may seem grandiose to us, but God is supposed to be without limit. God doesn’t need rest, to gather his strength, to take time off, ponder his options, or secure a steady supply of building materials. The time aspect literally only makes sense on a naturalistic hypothesis.
They spend a huge amount of time and effort pretending that Intelligent Design is not in any way religion, but their supporters will insist on depoking the feline.
Note that in order to justify the Bechly’s claim, you have to go way beyond ID into biblical literalism. And you have to limit God’s capability to create, so that his “cathedral” takes billions of years to build, when just could have produced the current biota instantly. I suppose it also implies that these are the End Times and that humans are the very pinnacle and reason of creation, which probably makes you feel proud.
Note also that the idea that most of the work regarding the building of life is now done is unsupported opinion that is inconsistent with known biology. So consilient with Genesis in more ways than one.
No. Pierre Paul Grasse has claimed the same thing by resorting not to the authority of the Bible at all but to his thorough knowledge of the history of life.
A creature that would be the pinnacle and reason of creation would be fool to feel proud of its status for he could not claim any merit for it. The only right attitude for him would be gratitude.
Eh, okay. I suppose if you’ve never looked into it you could have gotten that impression in some way. But, now just to stave off any confusion here, have you ever actually read anything on that subject? If not I recommend this book:
