Different in degree or kind (Introduction)

by dhw, Friday, December 20, 2013, 18:23 (3772 days ago) @ David Turell

Dhw: The higgledy-piggledy line of transitional forms looks for all the world like nature taking its own evolutionary course, as cell communities gradually found more efficient and more sophisticated ways of mastering the environment.
DAVID: I view it as the genome built to create a variety of forms as convergence shows.-But convergence entails variations on the same form ... which means genomes in different places respond in similar but often NOT identical ways to similar environmental demands. Doesn't this suggest individual responses rather than a universal programme handed down by the first living cells?-Dhw: "Degree" versus "kind" is a non-issue, except for anthropocentrists trying to prove an unprovable point.
DAVID: Remember, I use proof beyond a reasonable doubt.-As our next exchange clearly demonstrates, you cannot find proof beyond a reasonable doubthw: I just find the scale and the inconsistencies of your divine preplanning hypothesis beyond the bounds of credibility ... but I guess that's faith for you.
DAVID: Since you have never experienced faith, I'm sure it is new territory for you to try and understand.-Your faith in your anthropocentric,preprogramming hypothesis has nothing to do with proof. One could just as reasonably have faith in the theistic version of the "intelligent cell" hypothesis. See also your comment under "Cellular intelligence derailed?":
DAVID: I don't know God's exact plan when it seems he started evolution and it turned out like a confusing bush of organisms.-So maybe his plan was not what you thought it was. In response to my repeated doubts about the scale and details of this anthropocentric plan, you say: "The thought comes from the evidence of the evolutionary process we see". But the evidence we see is a "confusing bush of organisms", which makes it impossible for you to fit the plan and the process together. Proof beyond a reasonable doubt?-You must know that science takes you nowhere near your conclusion that evolution was anthropocentrically planned and preprogrammed from the start by your God. The very fact that most scientists don't even believe in your God has to cast a degree of doubt on the "reasonableness" of your hypothesis. I love the way you use science to illuminate the huge complexities of living systems, and to undermine the case for chance and hence for Dawkins-type atheism. This is scientific thinking at its best. But when you extrapolate nebulous hypotheses about God's intentions, and you impose your own system on a history that so often refuses to conform, I feel you have left science behind, and have entered a field of more than reasonable doubt. Perhaps what is needed is a clearer division between what constitutes science and what constitutes faith ... a need which I think is equally applicable to those scientists who like to believe that science favours atheism.