Does evolution have a purpose? (Evolution)

by dhw, Tuesday, October 21, 2014, 19:07 (3684 days ago) @ David Turell
edited by dhw, Tuesday, October 21, 2014, 19:13

dhw: Your distortion of our discussion is unworthy of you.
DAVID: It is no distortion, but represents my true feelings from the beginning. You have hunted for an 'out' from the dicotomy of chance or design. -From the beginning I made it clear that I was trying to understand how evolution works, and in defence of my hypothesis of an intelligent, inventive mechanism within the cell (against your vehement opposition), I put on my theist's hat to allow for God as the maker of the mechanism. Chance has played no role in this discussion. We are now discussing two points: the degree of the inventive mechanism's autonomy, and your anthropocentric view of evolution's purpose. Please let us continue the quest for clarification of these issues. I'll start at the end of your last post.-dhw: I still don't understand why you think God is clever enough to devise plans for all these different organs to be passed down through billions of years, organisms and generations, surviving all the environmental upheavals (probably random), eventually to produce the necessary kidneys etc., but you don't think he's clever enough to have devised a mechanism to invent them...-DAVID: I do think He is clever enough. That is why I have followed this path with you in discussing an IM. You have helped me find a third way out of my dilemma. I am appreciative, but I won't back down from denying your proposed hypothesis of sentinet cell communities, by themelves, have any chance of doing the job. I have to remind you, it is my considered and constant opinion you have blown the interpretation of "sentient cells" all out of proportion.-Hardly out of all proportion, since you now acknowledge that sentient cell communities, with their built-in “brain” (the genome), are capable of inventing an organ as complex as the elephant's trunk. But your argument is still puzzling: God is clever enough to devise a mechanism that can autonomously invent kidneys etc., but you won't back down from your contention that he did not do so. Instead, then, you have to revert to the preprogramming/dabbling that caused your dilemma in the first place. However, we have come this far, so perhaps we can delve a little deeper. 
 
DAVID: I have worked along with you on the IM idea as a way God could implant enough information and planning in advance, that the evolutionary jumps would then be taken care of on their own. I have called it 'semi-autonomous' all along and resisted your 'autonomous' insistence for very good reason. God is in total control of the patterns I have described for the necessary functional organ systems. Odd ball developmwents like the elephant trunk, the whale blowholes, horses' nostrils, or our notrils are the type of variation that God might allow, as side issues.-So the organs you identify with “patterns” (heart, lungs, kidneys, brains etc.) are too complex for God's inventive mechanism to have invented autonomously. Therefore he preprogrammed them all into the first cells 3.7 billion years ago. Is that correct?
 
DAVID: ...And it is true that elementary circulatory systems had no hearts, then beating areas, then had two chambers and then developed to three and finally four chambers. However, each of those jumps is enormous and requires much planning from information to jump the gaps.-So do you think each consecutive stage from beating areas to four chambers was preprogrammed into the first cells 3.7 billion years ago, or did God dabble, or could the inventive mechanism have progressively developed that elementary system? -dhw: In all mammals the brain is a control centre, registering and processing information, taking decisions etc. I agree that ours has additional layers of self-awareness, thereby expanding our range of knowledge and activity far beyond that of any other organism, but it still performs the same functions as all other brains -DAVID: You casually mention 'additional layers' as if our brain is a four-layer cake instead of three. Compared to the animals' three, it is a 12-layer cake or more! "Same functions", yes, and then many, many more.

The dog's nose is said to have about 220 million olfactory receptors compared to our approx. 5 million. Its sense of smell may be 1000 or even 10,000 times more acute than ours. Is this gap the result of preprogramming or of the IM's work? The gap between the human brain and the dog's brain may be of similar proportions. You obviously don't think the IM worked on existing brains, so do you think the human brain was preprogrammed separately from other brains 3.7 billion years ago, or did God dabble?