Innovation (Introduction)

by dhw, Thursday, May 02, 2013, 11:37 (4224 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: I have no idea, as previously stated of the proportions of dabble/preprogramming that made evolution advance to US, but my point about humans has nothing to do with the fact that apes had "eyes, sex, lungs, livers" etc. Humans were obviously thrust out of the simian herd. There was no need for upright posture, big brain, etc.
 
dhw: There was "no need" for eyes etc. either, since bacteria have kept going without them. ... If the human branch of the evolutionary bush was pre-programmed, then so were eyes etc., which are integral to humans.-DAVID: Didn't say they weren't, but you do not answer my point. Humans leapt forward.-My point was to prove that humans were not preprogrammed. Yes, the brain and posture were a leap forward. So were multicellularity, sex, the five senses...I answered your point on April 30 at 12.19: "Springing out of the primate herd" could only be a divine dabble [theist answer], or a stroke of genius by the intelligent cell/genome/DNA mechanism [theist/atheist/agnostic answer]."
 
dhw: But according to you, all the preceding "byproducts" developed them through responding to random changes in the environment, so these essential human organs were NOT preprogrammed.-DAVID: I've said just the opposite: evolution appears to be a combination of automatic responses to challenges and dabbling. The Cambrian is a major dabble.-The opposite would be that they WERE preprogrammed. So let's have a straight answer: do you still believe that your God planned and preprogrammed the human branch of the evolutionary bush from the very start? 
 
dhw; As for "African climate", yet again you talk as if the whole of Africa had one climate. It's a vast continent. There's no reason at all why climate change in one area might not have triggered the innovations, while in other areas apes and the climate remained unaffected.-DAVID: Please review the human tree: Luci, Ardi, Sediba, etc. placed all over Africa developing in all the disparate climates. The apes stayed apes.-Ardi and Lucy were found in Ethiopia, Sediba in South Africa, and they range from about 4.4 to 2 million years old. How does this prove that each of them didn't evolve locally in an environment that became unsuitable for tree-dwelling apes? Or that they hadn't migrated from ex-ape to ape country?-Dhw (discussing Wallace): Darwin also emphasizes the similarities between so-called civilized and so-called savage humans in The Descent of Man, but that's still true if humans descended from "ape-like animals", and if anything it supports the idea of common ancestry, which you have always accepted. -DAVID: Common primate to human ancestry, yes. Darwin inferred the savages were inferior which led to support for Eugenics.-This is a complete non sequitur and a disgraceful distortion of Darwin's views, which I corrected in my post of 10 November 2012 at 13.31 under "Darwin and atheism". On the same day you wrote: "Thank you for this interpretation. I am educated." Not for long, it seems!-Dhw (quoting Wallace): Many of our fellow animals also "have abilities that they never have the opportunity to use". So does that mean a dolphin that doesn't detect underwater mines, or a dog that doesn't guide blind people must have been created by divine intervention? ...Of course the human potential is much vaster, but unused brain capacity only means that full use is not the sole criterion for survival.-DAVID: The "much vaster" 'difference of man and the difference it makes' Exactly the point, and you made it for me. Where did that enormous "unused brain capacity" come from and why?-Maybe your God dabbled, or maybe "it was a stroke of genius by the intelligent cell/genome/DNA mechanism." Round and round we go. My point was to refute Wallace.
 
dhw: I offered you THREE first causes, but you are goading me by omitting all of them! I wrote: "First cause conscious energy is no more believable than first cause non-conscious energy which evolves into consciousness, or first cause non-conscious energy which strikes lucky. That's where we hit your famous wall of uncertainty..." The fact that you've chosen one of these three unlikelihoods is no reason for omitting my answer and then accusing me of not wanting to answer.
 
DAVID: My problem with your answer is "no more believable" as a modifier in your three suggestions. You invent a variety of first causes and accept none of them!
 
You've always maintained that the First Cause is energy, and that your particular first cause energy is conscious. Your invention or mine? -DAVID: Pick one as your favorite. -Why?-DAVID: At least accept that there must be a First Cause, by necessity, in some form, in any chain or cause and effect, or don't you believe that either? Why is there anything? We are here. There must be a cause. Perhaps you would like to return to the 'eternal universe theory' of pre-Einstein days.-I've always accepted that there must be a First Cause, but the three I've listed, including your own, are equally nebulous. As regards an "eternal universe", all three First Causes ... big bang or no big bang ... are eternal including yours, so in that sense BBella's All That Is is eternal, whether you call it God, energy, or the universe.