DILEMMAS (Evolution)

by David Turell , Thursday, October 30, 2014, 19:15 (3675 days ago) @ dhw


> dhw
; We need to consider the implications of the following exchanges:
> 
> dhw: So did the inventive mechanism work out how to stretch the giraffe's neck, or are you saying God planned the giraffe's neck? I am saying the former.
> DAVID: The neck follows the pattern and is an adaptation the IM could have handled it seems to me.
> 
> dhw: In the hypothesis I have proposed, God provided the information that enables organisms to invent. That does not mean he dictates WHAT they are going to invent (e.g. the giraffe's long neck).-> DAVID: Fair enough.
> 
> dhw: This means that God does not have total control over evolution. The IM does its own inventing within the parameters of what you have called the patterns (which he set). Hence the higgledy-piggledy bush of evolution. In the context of Darwin's theory, species were not formed by random mutations, but by deliberate adaptations / innovations invented by the mechanism God devised for that very purpose.-I doubt that God would allow new species without his total control.-> dhw: The major structures (patterns) must work straight away (out goes gradualism), but the variations may take place over an indefinite period, as the environment changes and the IM does its work.-I accept the idea of adaptations and variations based on the original patterns.-> dhw: There are no transitions (hence the gaps in the fossil record), since variations must also work straight away if they are to survive.-Here your reasoning fails to recognize that the gaps are too big to assume an IM can do that much advance planning to have immediate success. It really has to be God at the gaps to twist an old phrase. See GK's recent entry on simple to complex. -> dhw: Common descent still stands; natural selection still stands (because only successful adaptations/innovations will survive); competition still stands as an element of natural selection; assuming God did not deliberately organize every single change in the environment, chance still plays a role (a) through these changes,-OK-> dhw: and (b) through the autonomy of the IM (free to invent within the parameters established by the patterns), over which God has deliberately given up control, except that he dabbles when he wants to (e.g. perhaps in order to direct specific organisms towards making the human brain). -Again, a semi-autonomous IM. It must follow stringent rules.-> 
> dhw: I am also mulling. What is crucial at this stage of our mulling is that you accept the possibility of an inventive mechanism within the cell/cell community (the “brain” in the genome) which can produce variations that have not been preprogrammed.-I have pointd out ways it might have worked: two organisms working out symbiosis, the longer giraffe neck, ant rafts. But nothing as complex as monarch butterfly migration through four generations of metamorphosis. That comes with the patterns.