EVOLUTION AND PURPOSE (Evolution)

by dhw, Sunday, November 29, 2015, 13:41 (3064 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: ...your ‘onboard drive to complexity' is no different from the ‘inventive mechanism' we have agreed must be present. 
DAVID: I agree. But I see a degree of difference. In 'drive to complexity' I see a specific intent to make organisms more progressively complex arriving at humans and their brain. An arrow of purpose. To me the IM doesn't seem to imply that purpose. -Of course an IM doesn't imply the intent to arrive at humans. Nor does a drive to complexity. That is the purpose you have imposed on it.-DAVID: The invention need not be more complex, but just a useful adaptation for an immediate purpose.-I do not regard adaptation as invention. We have agreed that it is innovation that leads to new species. Actually I find it irritating that some commentators treat examples of adaptation as evidence for evolution - including the trout and the daphnia I referred to earlier. Adaptation alone would have left life stuck on bacteria. My hypothesis is that the same intelligent inventive mechanism may be responsible for both adaptation and innovation.-dhw: I have never understood what you mean by “partial” or “semi” other than as a reference to the restrictions imposed by the environment and the organism's own nature, which do not explain inventiveness.
DAVID: In my guesses as to how it works, I can't give you any exactitude about God's limits to inventiveness. I am not even thinking about environment or the organism's nature, but construction of new useful parts. Obviously two heads are not allowed. This is where pattern planning fits into my thinking, Pentadactyl appendages as examples. [...]-Patterns are inevitable if all organisms descended from earlier organisms. Once the pentadactyl pattern had been invented, different organisms would have varied it for their own purposes. Are you now suggesting with your “partial” that your God stuck the first limbs on the protowalker and then gave all subsequent organisms the freedom to develop their own versions? That would fit in with the hypothesis I suggested below:
 
dhw: ...namely that your God has given organisms free rein, but intervenes if he doesn't like what is going on, or wants to guide evolution in a different direction. This would cover the anomaly of all the species, lifestyles and natural wonders that do not seem to fit in with your anthropocentrism. 
DAVID: I don't think the bush of life is from free rein, but a required balance of nature, no matter how weird some the outcomes happen to be. We've discussed this before. You are the guy who wants a reason for everything, and I've given you one. -Actually, it's the other way round. You are the guy who keeps telling me to look for a reason for everything, by which you mean your God's “arrow of purpose”. Apparently dinosaurs are dead, the wasp lays its eggs on the spider's back, the duckbilled platypus is still waddling around, and zillions of probably lifeless solar systems come and go in order to balance nature just so that we humans can exist. No, sir, I am the guy who challenges your reason for everything.