Does evolution have a purpose? (Evolution)

by dhw, Friday, October 17, 2014, 17:10 (3688 days ago) @ David Turell
edited by dhw, Friday, October 17, 2014, 17:30

dhw: Your assumption about God's intentions has left you in an even worse dilemma than before: you want the IM to be free, so you can explain the bush, and you don't want it to be free because you want humans to be the goal......How can the built-in instructions to produce humans leave the IM free to invent the billions of innovations without which humans could not exist? You are in danger of choking on your cake!-DAVID: I love my cake. You keep skipping the fact that I describe the IM as 'semi-autonomous. Not free, but working under guidelines, like the auto factory that made your Volkswagen with robots. Only my IM is not robotic but has degrees of freedom to invent as necessary, based on perceived necessities.-Skipping? My whole post is an attempt to show the contradictions your “semi-autonomous” imposes on your scenario. You have not answered my question, so let me explain and rephrase it. If, as you acknowledge later, the IM was "very likely" free to invent the doggy's nose, presumably it was also free to invent the eyes, ears, kidneys, legs, brain that are equally essential to the doggy's dogginess. But nose, eyes, ears etc. are also essential to human-ness. So the IM was free to invent all these organs for dogs, but it was preprogrammed to produce ours. You compare your IM to robots, which are preprogrammed, but then you say it's not robotic, so that comparison doesn't help us much. Nor does “degrees of freedom”, since either the IM did or did not autonomously produce the innovations leading from bacteria to us. Two questions, then: do you think the IM freely(i.e. not preprogrammed) invented the doggy nose, eyes, ears, kidneys, legs, brain, or were they preprogrammed in the first cells? Do you think the IM freely (i.e. not preprogrammed) invented the human nose, eyes, ears, kidneys, legs, brain, or were they preprogrammed in the first cells? (I have deliberately put “brain” last.) -dhw: Why don't all organisms have doggy noses? Every species has to find its niche in the given environment, and to develop a behavioural pattern that will enable it to survive. Then there's probably stasis until a change in the environment causes some to perish, some to adapt, and some to innovate.
DAVID: By environment you must include climate, asteroids, volcanic eruptions, competition from other species, etc.? Wolves have the same 'nosi'ness since doggies are wolves in breeder's clothing.-Yes of course environment includes all those factors. The IM has to respond to any change. Organisms that are not destroyed will adapt or innovate. I am aware that the canis lupus is a species of dog. -DAVID: I see purpose and design everywhere. Everything looks very directed, in my eyes.
dhw: And to mine, but if my hypothesis of an IM is true, the direction comes from within: every species, including humans, has designed its own unique properties to serve the purpose of survival and/or improvement. ..... you insist on doing so yourself and then you try to adapt life's history to your reading, even though you can see that it just doesn't fit. Eat the cake, dear David!-DAVID: I can hypothesize my IM any way I wish and enjoy the cake. A semi-autonomous IM with guidelines works just fine for me. You see purpose and design and then just ignore the obvious. We humans shouldn't be here by all odds but we are. Everything screams purpose, just not loud enough for you.-And Dawkins can hypothesize whatever he wishes too, but surely we can probe a bit deeper than that. What is the obvious that I am ignoring? That God planned humans from the start? By all odds, no form of life should be here, but there are zillions of forms. Why must the zillions of forms scream that they are or were all here for the sake of humans? Can't they have a life and purpose of their own?