Genome complexity: new review of epigenetics studies (Introduction)

by dhw, Friday, May 12, 2017, 13:31 (2540 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: Planning requires knowledge of the future. Please tell us about adaptations that have been observed BEFORE the relevant environmental changes took place.
DAVID: My point is that in seeing a future body type requires mentation and planning. See the whale series as shown in the video of today. As you know and see below about apes, many species appear without any environmental change.

The pre-whale did change its environment, from land to water. This required adaptation, and the final result of the adaptations was a new species.(We can't always draw a clear line between adaptation and innovation.) Please tell me now about adaptations observed before the relevant environmental changes took place.

dhw: I am not suggesting that my cell committees plan for future changes in the environment. I am suggesting that they respond to changes as they happen. In your scenario, speciation, lifestyles and natural wonders all require God’s preprogramming or dabbling in order to keep life going for the sake of humans. Once again: are you now backtracking on your insistence that God also designed all the lifestyles and natural wonders for the same purpose?

DAVID: The primary purpose of evolution is humans. You are reverting to pure Darwin. Speciation can occur without environmental changes.

So are you backtracking on your insistence that only God could have designed all the lifestyles and natural wonders, and did so in order to keep life going until he could produce humans? We have no idea how speciation takes place, but I would draw your attention to your own comment: “The evolution of the conditions on Earth and the evolution of life obviously co-evolved.” Yes, it’s obvious. However, according to you God creates new species, lifestyles and natural wonders, and afterwards creates the conditions in which they are able to live, as opposed to new environments triggering structural changes.

DAVID: I have made the point that environmental changes never pushed the drive to humans. apes are still apes. Environment is only one of many factors that drive evolution. Darwin used that argument, but his entire theory is weak, as we know.

dhw: We have both made the point over and over again that environmental changes never pushed the drive to multicellularity as a whole, since bacteria are still with us. That is why over and over again I have suggested that all advances beyond bacteria, including humans, can be attributed to the drive for survival and/or improvement. Darwin argued that environmental factors, random mutations, competition for survival and natural selection drove evolution.

DAVID: Again pure Darwin: natural selection is a passive judge, not a driver. Competition and environmental changes may not have driven evolution. A drive to complexity is an obvious component.

We have been over this umpteen times. Your drive to complexity is my drive to improvement. “Pure" Darwin? You have split my comments Here is the continuation:

dhw: We both reject random mutations, I suggest cellular intelligence (perhaps God-given) instead, and would add cooperation to competition. I don’t know how any of this supports your thesis that God created new species, lifestyles etc. before creating the conditions that demanded or allowed them.
DAVID: My thesis is based on many more factors than the ones you list. They are in two books and the entries here. The evolution of the conditions on Earth and the evolution of life obviously co-evolved. God prefers evolutionary processes to achieve His goals. I've agreed elsewhere that it might be a way God can experiment, if He wishes, but that is a big IF.

Since we both believe evolution happened, then clearly if God exists, he used evolutionary methods to achieve his goals. However, the goal that you impose on him (the production of humans) does not fit in with the higgledy-piggledy history of evolution, and there is no evidence that the evolutionary processes he prefers are a 3.8-billion-year-old programme and/or dabbling not only for every single innovation, lifestyle and natural wonder, but also for every single change in the environment – local and global – that apparently followed on after he had designed the organism that was to live in the new environment. Apart, that is, from the pre-whale, which apparently had to be designed and then redesigned over and over again AFTER it had entered the water. (Or do you believe it only entered the water after God had fiddled with its nostrils?)