Different in degree or kind (Introduction)

by dhw, Sunday, December 22, 2013, 12:14 (3989 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: There is no contradiction here, except that the distinction between convergent and parallel evolution is sometimes blurred (unrelated desert plants on different continents often have similar forms of leaf, and that is also called convergence).
DAVID: Yees, but that is a softer interpretation.-So please don't tell me my interpretation is "wrong" and I need to look the term up! In any case it makes no difference to the argument. -dhw: I am all in favour of the view that evolution is a history of experimentation. That is why, in my opinion, your hypothesis that all innovations were preprogrammed in the very first cells (apart from when God dabbled) makes your reasoning fall out of place.
David: What I have said is that God made life very inventive which is why we see the bush and convergence (C-M definition). Life has some programs, apparently, to allow it inventive variations. He did not program every variation in evolution.-Life does not invent anything. There is no such organism as life. You have a choice here: either the organisms (cells and cell communities) do the inventing, which means they have an inventive intelligence of their own, or your God does it. Since you insist that cells are automatons that can only obey instructions, and we've agreed to jettison random mutations, this can only mean that according to you God does all the inventing (preprogramming or dabbling). -dhw: If organisms respond to similar environmental conditions with six different types of eyes, I would suggest that this points to individual responses rather than a universal programme handed down from the first cells.
DAVID: That is your individual interpretation. Conway Morris would disagree.-But you should not claim that it is a "misinterpretation". Please explain why you or Conway Morris believe that a few billion years ago your God preprogrammed six different types of eyes (or dabbled to make them), when only one type is needed for what you say was the purpose of evolution: humans. -dhw: Experimentation and what you call "a confusing bush of organisms" do not fit in with the precise planning advocated by your anthropocentric view of evolution, or with your insistence that cells and cell communities are mere automatons obeying your God's pre-given instructions. You can't have it both ways.
DAVID: Not both ways if you follow my reasoning.I have never said that it was precise planning. We have a bush of life and a bush of hominins. But the bush of hominins, which appears for no good reason in challenges of nature provids me evidence for a final thrust to humans, planned from the beginning. I have no idea why God chose such a strange way of getting there...-I can only repeat that if you insist God planned humans from the beginning, the first cells must have been chock-a-block with programmes for the billions of innovations necessary to lead from single cells to us. And if you find this a strange way of getting there, you should at least be prepared to consider an alternative explanation.