Evolution v Creationism: guided evolution? dhw? (Evolution)

by dhw, Monday, April 20, 2015, 21:08 (3291 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: ...many people use the same arguments to oppose human autonomy as you use to oppose bacterial autonomy (it's all chemical responses governed by conditions we cannot control). If “one cannot tell the difference”, perhaps one should keep an open mind in both cases. 
DAVID: I make up new thoughts and proposals all the time. Note the article on Sam Harris' book. Your referral to the short-sided view of how our brain works has no relevance to me. I don't accept it, and it is a very poor comparison to bacterial thought process, which doesn't exist.-Scientists like Margulis, McClintock, Shapiro, Albrecht-Buehler etc. tell us that bacteria make up new “thoughts” (but not human-type thinking) and proposals all the time. You are of course free to reject their findings, but please see my responses to the Talbott and Harris articles. -dhw: I have never asked you to choose between preprogramming and dabbling. ..... I find it surprising that you regard these hypotheses as reasonable but totally reject the hypothesis that your God might have endowed organisms with the ability to do their own inventing.
DAVID: You constantly skip over my conclusion that humans were the end point of evolution. If organisms did their own fully free inventing, humans might never appear. We are back at chance. The bush of life is strange enough as it is, but we've talked about balance of nature.-I have never skipped your conclusion, and have repeatedly pointed out that this anthropocentric view of evolution is what blinds you to the higgledy-piggledy comings and goings. Wearing my theist cap, I have conceded the possibility of divine dabbling, but that would indicate things going wrong, changes of plan, or improvisation, which you can't tolerate because of your fixed ideas about God's infallibility. Your alternative is the preprogramming of every single innovation, allowing for every single change in the environment - a scenario you gloss over with “guidance”. “Balance of nature” is another gloss. We all acknowledge its necessity and its constant changes, but it doesn't support the argument that the zillions of species extinct and extant were necessary for the production of humans.
 
DAVID: And how did single cells develop the intelligence to produce complex 'multicells' like humans? Do you really understand the uber-complexity that is still under discovery? [...] How much complexity do you need before recognizing that planning intelligence is needed to be behind it? -I am aware of the über-complexity, and I don't know how single cells developed the intelligence etc. Nobody knows. How did primal energy acquire its intelligence and its knowledge of how to create universes and life? Nobody knows. But mumble “first cause” and you think the unanswerable question can simply be ignored.