DILEMMAS (Evolution)

by dhw, Sunday, October 26, 2014, 19:52 (3462 days ago) @ David Turell

Dhw: I agree with your “pattern” idea [...] Once a “pattern” is successful, it branches out into different forms, but retains its basic structure. You've now surprised me, though, by including spider silk as one of the patterns.
DAVID: If you knew anything about the biology of spiders you would not have been surprised. -You then explain spider biology, which like that of all living organisms is astonishingly complex (see below for “design”). You missed my point, which was: 
dhw: This is why preprogramming and purpose seem to me to go way, way beyond the bounds of credibility. You believe that the very first cells were designed to lead to humans, but also to lead to spider silk. Spider silk, then, was as special to God as humans - unless you think humans could never have evolved without it. This is just one of billions of preprogrammed patterns, all of which had to be passed down for billions of years etc. -DAVID: I'm surprised at you. We are discussing incredulity! The amazing variety of life's complex and specific mechanisms is beyond all imagination. It suggests miracles. That is why I puzzle. Tony seems to assume God steps in at each stage. I think He could have programmed most of it from the beginning. -Of course we're discussing incredulity. We agree that life is too complex for us to believe that it's the product of chance: that too is incredulity, which you accept as an argument. The variety and complexity of life does indeed suggest miracles, and so we're both puzzled. That's why we look for a credible solution. You propose that 3.7 billion years ago, before spiders even existed, God preprogrammed the first living cells not only to produce humans and spiders, but also to give spiders a tail gland to produce a liquid material which would solidify into a strand stronger than steel. Along with billions of other such programmes for the billions of different innovations, this individual spider programme - implanted in those minuscule first cells - would survive through billions of descendants, species and environmental changes until spider-silk-time arrived. I find that incredible, so I'm trying to find another explanation.
 
DAVID: Yes, the unimaginable scale of life's diversity and unusual functionalities defies explanation. And years ago you thought Darwinism might do it. But as Denton points out in his essay, 34 years since his first book, it seems more and more that Darwinism doesn't work, the research pointing more and more away from tiny selective breeding steps.-As usual, you switch to attacking Darwinism. If you believe in common descent (still valid in your hypothesis), you cannot reject the theory en bloc. We have agreed a thousand times that we do not accept gradualism or random mutations, so we're looking for an alternative.
 
dhw: We've also discussed another aspect of your dilemma, now graphically illustrated by the spider's silk: if humans were the purpose, why the vast variety and the comings and goings provided by the evolutionary bush....
DAVID: That is exactly the point. I have to reconcile the bush faced with the obvious purpose to produce humans.-Thank you. I'm offering a way out of that dilemma as an alternative to your inadequate preprogramming hypothesis which - like a chance origin of life and evolution - seems to me incredible.
 
dhw: Here is a possible solution to both dilemmas: God set in motion an inventive mechanism that autonomously produced the great higgledy-piggledy, but he frequently dabbled in order to guide evolution either towards a predetermined goal, or towards a goal that crystallized as the process went along.-DAVID: You certainly don't think as I do. The IM is adaptation and nothing more. The Basic Patterns are all in the pre-programming. -You simply reiterate your explanation, despite its failure to explain the higgledy-piggledy bush, and you reiterate your rigid interpretation of the IM's potential, as if all research into the nature of the cell has been completed. And yet you go on to say:
DAVID: For another day: there is a whole layer of gene function we know nothing about. We know what genes do by elimination and substitution studies in embryology. We have no idea how they do it. When that is found out I hope your incredulity increases to the point that you realize the end of Darwinism is near. It is. It can't work.-We are not talking about gradualism or random mutations. We are talking about mechanisms within the genome that may be capable of more than mere adaptation. Evolution is going through a period of stasis, and so currently we see only adaptation. I am proposing a theistic hypothesis: instead of preprogramming every innovation you can think of, God created a mechanism within the cell (located in the genome) that is capable not only of adapting - which itself requires great awareness and ”technical” skill - but also of creating most (I shan't be dogmatic) of the variations we see in the evolutionary bush; but he dabbled in order to create the basic structures (such as heart, kidneys, eyes etc.) and maybe even some variations, like the human brain. “There is a whole layer of gene function we know nothing about”, and yet you know that the genome is incapable of innovation.