Different in degree or kind (Introduction)

by David Turell , Sunday, December 22, 2013, 15:44 (3770 days ago) @ dhw

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.
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> dhw: 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. -Because a leaf is a leaf is a leaf. I am describing totally diffferent forms of an eye organ, that we call eyes because of their function, not their very different form.
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> dhw: 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).-I use the word life to refer to living matter, an emergent state. Living matter creates divergent forms or variations. Our argument is 'how'. You have clearly defined my answer. And cells do have an inventive intelligence, implanted in genetic code. I have given a source for the code, you have not. Your answers seem to be 'it is just there', but no 'how' is presented.- 
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> dhw: 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.-What I am saying is the living material is given enough inventive techniques that convergence can occur in many ways. 
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> dhw: 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.-I am prepared, always have been. Theistic evolution provides fur early inventiveness that progresses much as we see human invention: the Wright brothers motorized kite to Boeing 747s. One inventive change builds on the next. I really doubt much dabbling.