Convergence or divergence? (Introduction)

by dhw, Wednesday, July 24, 2013, 13:12 (4141 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw;"More in favor of design than evolution" suggests that the two are incompatible. They are not. Plenty of people believe in both. Unless you think your God created every single new organ and organism by mumbling some magic formula, or by zillions of acts of psychokinesis, you will surely have to subscribe to the theory that he created a mechanism capable of adapting and innovating without his direct intervention. Atheists can believe in the same mechanism, and claim that it fashioned itself by chance. Either way, evolution through the selfsame mechanism progresses by design (as opposed to Darwin's random mutations). Only the origin of the mechanism is then at issue. If you accept the "intelligent cell/genome" hypothesis, you will get convergence, divergence, and a solution to all the mysteries of evolution with the exception of how it started!-DAVID: You skip the same old problem: the intelligence cell/genome did not arise by chance, by your own statement that you do not trust chance to achieve it. I do subscribe to the theory that generally God's evolutionary process handles everything in its stride, and requires only an occasional dabble. That is what convergence shows. Divergence is almost always a twist on an established pattern.-I have not skipped it. I have mentioned it explicitly, but as always you prefer to focus on your theory of the divine when I am only trying to understand the process by which evolution works. I am in good company, since Darwin did the same! Divergence is only "a twist on an established pattern" once an innovation has "caught on". It's innovation that leads to new organs and new species, and that is where the "intelligent cell/genome" really comes into its own. Your God wouldn't even need to dabble if it weren't for your lumbering him with your anthropocentric view of the universe! But we don't need to go into that again, do we?-DAVID: Evolution may require groups of beneficial mutations to advance:-http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-07-evolution-hitchhikers.html-Since any mutation would have to link up with the rest of the organism, doesn't it stand to reason that there would have to be more than one change? It all points to cooperation between intelligent cells.