Logic and evolution: doubting Darwin; (Introduction)

by dhw, Wednesday, September 04, 2019, 10:17 (1697 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: I view the point of this essay is that humans cannot be justified by Darwin's principal theories. The only accomplishment of Darwin is to put the emphasis on evolution. Once again you ignore Adler's point that we are different in kind, and God is required.

What do you mean by his “principal theories”? We have agreed that innovations can't be explained by random mutations and natural selection. That is why you have treated us to a huge list of natural wonders and always added the comment that they must have been designed! According to you they are all special and so “God is required”, and although we can agree that humans are extra special because of their astonishing levels of consciousness, the argument against chance and Darwin’s random mutations applies to every organism, right down to the single cell.

DAVID: Your paragraph simply uses a hope that organisms can evolve themselves. Your evidence is epigenetics which only provides adaptations, nothing like speciation, according to current scientific findings.

It’s not a hope, it’s a hypothesis, and your “only provides adaptations” masks the fact that adaptation itself requires intelligence, and sometimes it’s difficult to draw a borderline between adaptation and innovation (for instance, legs becoming flippers, and the rest of the whale’s body undergoing so many adaptations that the whale becomes a new species). Nobody knows how speciation occurs, but adaptation provides a possible clue. I do not know of any “scientific findings” that support your fixed belief that your God preprogrammed or dabbled pre-whale legs turning into flippers before pre-whales entered the water. Ditto every other adaptation/innovation you can think of.

Under “Neanderthal”, Same again:
DAVID: The designing part of our body requires neurons. Your cell communities are not. What we know is they can make epigenetic adaptations, nothing more.

dhw: Our cell communities are not what? Neurons are also cells! Of course cellular intelligence as the driving force of innovation is only a theory, but epigenetic adaptations also require intelligence, so the idea is an extension of something that can be observed. My theory is a logical alternative to your own, which is equally unproven.

DAVID: Your cells have no neurological abilities.

There are all kinds of cells, including neurons. In multicellular organisms they combine to form communities, and these communities – whether 1) divinely preprogrammed or 2) divinely dabbled, or 3) acting autonomously, are the producers of innovations. You simply reject the third hypothesis, on the grounds that we don’t actually “know” if it is true. Same problem, then, with 1) and 2), but you have a fixed belief in at least one of them.

Under “monkey vocal calls”:

DAVID: We are different in kind to the point that we use a different area of the brain for speech. How did brain cell committees (from dhw) plan that move?

A possible answer to your question: The monkey brain and the monkey language have both proved to be adequate for monkey needs. Since you believe in common descent, presumably you believe that at some point a particular group of anthropoids descended from the trees and had to adapt to new conditions. Monkey language couldn’t cope, and so new forms of language were required, and the cell communities responded by restructuring themselves. NOT planned in advance – that is your theory, namely that God popped in and dabbled with their brains before they entered the new environment (as in the whale example above). You seem to accept minor autonomous epigenetic changes, but you refuse to consider the possibility that the same mechanism might have been responsible for the major changes as well.