EVOLUTION AND PURPOSE (Evolution)

by dhw, Monday, November 30, 2015, 13:38 (3064 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: ...my objection to your hypothesis is that you are implying an enormous inventive mental capacity to pre-plan the jump in the Cambrian explosion. I feel you need to factor in the enormous gap in your thinking. Darwin knew this, but never got the solution he wished for.-I accept the objection regarding the unproven “enormous inventive mental capacity”, though not in relation to preplanning. My hypothesis is based on the idea that organisms respond to (but do not predict) changes in their environment. This is known to happen with adaptation. I take it one (giant) step forward, and apply the same process to innovation. Dry land appears, and a particularly inventive fish decides to explore. It does not prophesy that dry land will appear and juggle around with its genome in anticipation. Yes, the Cambrian is an unexplained mystery of colossal proportions, but I do not see my hypothesis (not a belief) as any more unlikely than yours (a belief) or Darwin's.-dhw: 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? 
DAVID: Yes, that is my concept. For example the horse walks on one toe on each leg. Penta- to unidactyl.-This is more hopeful. If horses had the freedom to develop their own unidactyl variation, maybe some fish worked out how to survive on dry land, and maybe insects, birds, molluscs and vertebrates worked out their own varieties of senses, appendages and lifestyles, and maybe my friend the weaverbird worked out its own variation on nest-building patterns...That would explain the huge variety we find in the evolutionary bush, wouldn't it? Organisms following their own evolutionary paths. -dhw: 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.-DAVID: That is correct. You want me to have a reason for everything, and I admit in some areas the reasons are not obvious, but the overall purpose is. I ask you, is there a 'natural purpose' in the universe and in evolution of life or a specific purpose? Is there evidence of planning or simply a chance progression of change? There is our basic major difference.-Your argument appears to be that humans are here, and therefore humans are the overall purpose, while everything else either is or was here but I shouldn't ask why. So long as I don't ask why your hypothesis doesn't seem reasonable, your hypothesis is reasonable to the point of being "obvious". However, your questions are indeed the major ones that gave rise to this website in the first place. If there is a God, I agree that there has to be a purpose behind his creation of life. If there is no God, we can only make our own purposes. The difference here is that I don't know if God exists and you think you do. But when I put on my theist hat and consider the history of evolution, the difference between us is that I can see a variety of choices relating to God's purpose, whereas you can only see one: the production of humans (which in any case is only half a purpose, the other half of which would be the reason for producing humans).