An inventive mechanism (Evolution)

by dhw, Saturday, August 30, 2014, 12:29 (3736 days ago) @ dhw
edited by dhw, Saturday, August 30, 2014, 12:40

DHW: (under “Spider Silk”): I agree that we can only speculate, as we cannot observe the arrival of eyes, kidneys etc. However, adaptation is an observable fact, and it's not unreasonable to suppose that since cell communities can change themselves to cope with environmental threats, there is an internal mechanism for change. The question then becomes how inventive that mechanism might be. 
TONY: Limited adaptation. That is the keyword that seems to be missing from most statements when we discuss this. See the analogy above.-Thank you for the dog example, which is beautifully organized and expressed. However, it does only deal with limited adaptation, and the point that I am making is that if the cell communities contain a mechanism that can organize such minor changes, it may be possible that the same mechanism can organize major changes when the environment demands or allows it. That is why I suggested that perhaps (it's always “perhaps”) there have been no major environmental changes since the Cambrian to allow for further inventions (as opposed to adaptations).-TONY: I give you Polymorphism. To me, this concept is what bridges the gaps between all of these discussions. It is where adaptation, variation, epigenetics, and to a limited extent, evolution meet. Let me pose a question. What if all life didn't evolve from a common ancestor, but instead was created from the same source code? Note, this differs from Darwinian evolution in that individual programs still have to be written individually, but they are all built upon the same framework until you get down to a level of abstraction that can handle all of the variants without further modification.
DAVID: Wow, this fits what I have been looking for, a code at the beginning of life that leads to a bush of life, not a tree. That could be the 'inventive mechanism'. I wish I knew more about programming, but it is obvious to me the genome is the most sophisticated program ever written, and we will take many more years picking it apart to understand it. At that point atheism will have little to support it.-QUOTE: "In effect, polymorphism trims down the work of the developer because he can now create a sort of general class with all the attributes and behaviors that he envisions for it. When the time comes for the developer to create more specific subclasses with certain unique attributes and behaviors, the developer can simply alter code in the specific portions where the behaviors will differ. All other portions of the code can be left as is."-If I've understood this correctly, it means God separately creating different “species” (in the sense of totally different organisms, as opposed to different “species of dog”which are all dogs). In that case, David's enthusiasm suggests a return to creationism.***- ***Your latest posts confirm a mixture of preplanning and dabbling. There is no inventive mechanism: only a mechanism that implements the plans of the developer.-My alternative is evolution driven by interaction between organism and environment. The theistic version of my hypothesis is your God (the developer) has created a mechanism which from within can of its own accord (i.e. without preprogramming) alter specific portions of an organism in order to change its attributes or behaviour, while all other portions of the organism remain as they were, other than adapting themselves to the new cell combinations. (The process would apply as much to innovation as to adaptation.) Same story, but different approach by the developer. This obviates the need for your God specifically to create the spider and the dragonfly, the alligator and the eagle one by one (or two by two), even if in your hypothesis he might only have to fiddle here and there rather than start de novo.