Does evolution have a purpose? (Evolution)

by dhw, Saturday, October 18, 2014, 18:29 (3687 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: (under “Origin of Life”): Still with my theist hat on, if God was clever enough to preprogramme the Cambrian jump into the first cells of 3.7 billion years ago, why do you insist that he can't have been clever enough to invent a 
mechanism that would work out its own way to cope with or exploit the new conditions?

DAVID: We have been over this before. A totally autonomous IM cannot possibly have the planning capacity for the Cambrian gap, unless given guidelines to follow. Of course God's capacity for planning can do it, or if He invented an IM, He gave it planning guidelines to follow, making it semi-autonomous.-Previously we agreed that the “guidelines” consisted of the constraints imposed on all organisms by the limitations as to what they can and can't do, and the demands of the environment. Now you are extending these guidelines to plans, which can only relate to the construction of the innovations that led to new species: i.e. new cell communities in the form of new organs, bones etc. We have used the kidney before as an example. What sort of “guideline” are you imagining? Did God insert into the first cells a programme that said: make an organ that will separate waste products from blood and turn them into urine, but it's up to you how you do it? If God was not capable of giving the IM the capacity to invent such complex organs, “planning guidelines” are a euphemism for precise plans, and back you go to your 3.7-billion-year-old preprogramming of all innovations, or your God jumping in with a dabble. “Semi-autonomous” fudges the whole issue. N.B. we are talking here about macroevolution - innovations, as opposed to adaptations and minor variations. This brings us to the next crucial area of your scenario.
 
dhw: So the IM was free to invent all these organs for dogs, but it was preprogrammed to produce ours. .... 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? 
DAVID: I am trying to propose a slightly different IM than you imagine. It is pre-programmed to eventually produce humans. It is semiautonomous. It has specific pre-programmed guidelines as to how to respond to changes in environment with changes in phenotype, and it has the freedom of choice in following those guidelines, but cannot exceed those guidelines. Thus bushiness.-I have understood what you are proposing, and my response is as above, but we now have the IM preprogrammed to produce humans, and “specific pre-programmed guidelines” for changes in phenotype, which above were called “planning guidelines”. The autonomy consists of “freedom of choice in following those guidelines”. What does that mean? The IM is free to say it won't follow the planning guidelines?-If the IM is preprogrammed to produce humans, it must be preprogrammed to produce all the innovations that have led from bacteria to humans. You have reproduced my two questions, just as you reproduced the earlier question: “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?” And you have not answered. I can only assume this is because you have now realized that in the context of macroevolution, your version of the IM has no autonomy at all.