Contingent evolution (Introduction)

by GateKeeper , Tuesday, July 01, 2014, 23:23 (3798 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: I have as many reservations about this hypothesis as I have about the hypotheses of Chance and of an eternally conscious form of energy that knows how to build a universe and life even before it's turned itself into matter. But I think it is just as worthy of serious consideration as those alternatives.
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> DAVID: You should have 'many reservations' about your hypothesis. I have even more. I will not budge from my contention that individual cells are basically automatic biochemical factories. However, when put together as an organism, I will grant that organisms have a degree of epigenetic adaptability which allows for rapid responses to environmental challenges. Since this is a part of the genetic code, and codes are the result of intelligent conscious planning (at least among humans), one cannot avoid looking at the origin of such an arrangement.
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> You are of course free to insist that you are right, just as scientists like Margulis and Albrecht-Buehler are free to conclude from their specialized research that cells and especially cell communities are not automata. As for origins, it is perfectly possible to argue the case for evolution and how it works without discussing the origin of the "arrangement". The agnostic Darwin showed the way: "How a nerve comes to be sensitive to light, hardly concerns us more than how life itself first originated" (Difficulties on Theory). 
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> DHW (to Tony): I'm sorry if I've forgotten your acknowledgement of "cellular intelligence" elsewhere. It wasn't mentioned in your list, and I would certainly not have put it under the category of guided evolution. 
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> TONY: Internal guidance is no less guidance than that which is externally imposed. Read up on group psychology. One of the interesting thing is how information and guidance is passed both up and down the chain.
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> We may be talking at cross purposes again. I assumed you meant guidance from your God, either by intervention or by pre-programming. Group psychology works very well for my hypothesis, as it depends entirely on intelligent cooperation between individual sets of cells working towards a common goal, which in this case is survival or improvement through innovation. No intervention, no pre-programming.
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> DHW: Even if your God endowed the first forms of life with these mechanisms (and I have left the question of origins open), I would argue that they could have been left to their own devices - i.e. your God did not intervene once he had set the process in motion.
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> TONY: Ironically, even the bible doesn't say that he interfered with his creation AFTER he finished with his work. Where we disagree is at which point he finished.
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> Fair comment. My hypothesis suggests that he might have finished when he created the first cells capable of reproducing, adapting and innovating (see below).
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> DHW: Again, this provides an explanation for what I see as the higgledy-piggledy bush of evolution.
> TONY: This is probably where we disagree more than anything. You see a higgledy-piggledy bush, I see a beautifully crafted symphony of life where each part is as elegant, graceful, and wonderful as it is strange and amazing. Each piece has its part to play, a purpose, and there is a time for every purpose under heaven. You struggle to SEE the purpose (or not to... or to simply refuse to accept as 'purpose' it until presented with a certified letter of intent.) I struggle to find the purpose, because I have yet to be presented with anything which I could not find a purpose for, and it is all the more beautiful for it. 
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> DAVID: What dhw means by the bush is that life is so diverse and so startlingly branched it resembles a bush more than a tree.
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> Once again we might be talking at cross purposes, since David believes humans were the purpose, and perhaps, Tony, you don't. I see the beauty, elegance and grace, and find it just as wonderful, strange and amazing as you do. So, incidentally, does Dawkins. And as I have said repeatedly, I see the purpose of survival and continuation and in some cases improvement. And if I believed in your God, I would probably believe that what David calls the "exuberance" IS the purpose. The bush suggests to me that God set the show in motion, and then sat back to see what would happen. What better entertainment than to be surprised by the billions of variations, rather than to know in advance just what's going to happen? He may even have deliberately built in the one random part of the equation ... environmental change ... to make the show more unpredictable. Just an idea, but it certainly fits in with the amazing diversity and higgledy-piggledy comings and goings of evolutionary history, doesn't it?
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> GATEKEEPER: Have you ever read about accelerating a particle(s) to the energies of the universe? How big the accelerator would be to collide two nuclei to those energies? Maybe "something" did.
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> Maybe. And the big question is whether the "something" knew what it was doing.-There are a limited number of "more probable" possibilities. "no nothing" is not one of them. My guess is if they built it, they are in the image of the periodic table and all it stands for. -"I and the father are one" 
from og-How long have you two gone back and forth with this?