Trilobite eyes (Introduction)

by dhw, Thursday, March 28, 2013, 16:47 (4259 days ago) @ Balance_Maintained

TONY: It wouldn't require new genetic material to change between a cat and a different breed of cat. They are of the same "kind".
Oops! Thank you.-DHW: However, your understanding of evolution is not the same as mine. Common descent entails a process of branching (the higgledy-piggledy bush), with some individual organisms acquiring new characteristics. Dogs never became cats. In different environments, one of their common ancestors may have innovated a doggy characteristic, and another a catty characteristic. Interbreeding might well continue for a time, but if the innovation was beneficial, it would flourish and eventually take over.[...]
 
TONY: Yeah, however you want to put it, at some point there had to be a separation between species. We have never observed that happening in a fashion that produces a breeding pair, even when we intervene in the breeding process. Since we have agreed that new functions are generally useless unless complete, then that would mean that a breeding pair is an absolute necessity.-I've covered this above, in the sentence about interbreeding, but in any case there is no reason why the "intelligent genome" in multiple organisms exposed to the same environment should not produce the same innovation. The process of "convergence" has frequently been observed, for instance in desert plants even on different continents that come up with the same solutions. Similarly several Maelestes gobienses, suddenly finding themselves in changed conditions, might well simultaneously provide themselves with a doggy innovation. Has anyone ever observed God creating a breeding pair?-dhw: Finally, back to (quoting Tony): [See, the problem with your intelligent genome is that it presupposes evolution from a common ancestor is true.] There simply is no evidence of that beyond speculation based on observations that could mean something else entirely." -dhw: You have applied this argument to the "intelligent genome" hypothesis, and I understand your point of view. But when I apply it to your God hypothesis, you seem to find it difficult to grasp (even labelling it "willful disbelief"). I wonder why.-TONY: I wasn't applying it to the intelligent genome, I was applying it to evolution, if I recall correctly. -Sorry for the misunderstanding, but it makes no difference to my gently phrased complaint about what I see as double standards!-TONY: The intelligent genome is far more plausible than evolution, but less plausible than God IMHO because the framework that must exist for there to even BE an intelligent genome is entirely too complex. That was the entire reason why I took 'life' out of the equation. Even without 'life' the universe is too complex to be random chance, and without life, your intelligent genome is useless in terms of explanatory power.-I always have great sympathy with arguments against random chance. As you will have gathered, I find chance as unlikely a creator of the complexities as I do an amorphous super-being that got its own super-intelligence from nowhere and nothing. Although the "panpsychist" alternative I have offered naturally demands a similar leap of faith, at least it has the merit (in my eyes) of NOT depending on chance or on an unknowable God. I'm not sure what your final comments signify, other than the fact what without life, any theory about life can have no explanatory power. Without a universe any theory about the universe can have no explanatory power either. Clearly I've missed something here.