Intelligence & Evolution (Evolution)

by dhw, Friday, October 18, 2013, 20:12 (4052 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: The innovations are a fact. Nobody knows how they occurred. You think God preplanned every innovation and species and behavioural mode (including your Venus flytrap) into the first few forms of life. I am suggesting that, if he exists, he only created the mechanism that would enable cells to devise their own combinations which led to higgledy-piggledy evolution.-DAVID: Good on you. That statement reflects my thesis. In the past I have stated that God created life to be very inventive, so your conclusion about me is off a bit. The higgledy piggledy is part of that inventiveness, but the overall direction was always toward humans. We've covered this in the past'-Our discussion concerns how this inventiveness is implemented. If you insist that cells are automatons, then they cannot possibly take decisions independently ... every innovation has to be preprogrammed, as must every strategic decision. That is the thesis you have proposed. In which case, your God also preprogrammed the dinosaur, the Venus flytrap, the ant, and us. If your God has given cells the ability to take their decisions independently, they are not automatons, and that explains the higgledy-piggledy advance of evolution.
 
dhw: And yet you claim that biochemistry supports your God hypothesis. Doesn't the 90% figure suggest to you that biochemistry allows for other explanations?-DAVID: No, it simply points out that there are many ways to analyze scientific data. Most scientists egotistically feel they can explain everything without God.-So 90% of biochemists have found different explanations from yours, although yours is based on your knowledge of biochemistry, and because they do not accept your explanation they are egotists. -dhw: The "intelligent cell" hypothesis takes randomness out of the equation, and as Margulis argues so potently, puts cooperation at the heart of evolution. This cooperation may not be solely as a result of challenges, because changes in the environment might also lead to new possibilities that are not NEEDED for survival, but enable organisms to find new niches for themselves through innovation. Hence dinosaurs, Venus flytraps, ants, and humans. If challenge was the only motivation, evolution could have stuck at the level of bacteria. This puts cells back in control of evolution, whether God gave them their intelligence or not.-DAVID: This takes us back to Gould and his observation that evolution, starting with the simplest, could only evolve in the direction of complexity. But bacteria are the most successful group on Earth. They have been here 3.6 billion years and have the biggest biomass. Why bother with complexity when it is not needed? There must be a driving force toward complexity, which implies the installation of a cooperative drive toward complexity. God at work.-You have repeated my own argument, but have inserted the words "installation" and "God at work". The alternative is that the drive toward complexity came from the intelligent cell, which may or may not have been invented by your God. You have now linked into the concept of cooperation. Same problem. If cells are automatons, they can only have been preprogrammed to cooperate, and what they produce through their cooperation must also have been preprogrammed, all the way back to the first forms of life. Those first cells sure were loaded.