DILEMMAS: A Response to DHW (Evolution)

by dhw, Monday, November 17, 2014, 20:27 (3657 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: Then you must argue that all the species, extinct and extant, including the monarch butterfly, were necessary for the existence of humans.
DAVID: Not at all. I am accepting Tony's pattern approach which is similar to my pattern approach. Set the original stages in patterns, and let variation by the organisms supply the bushy look.-The monarch butterfly is one of 15-20,000 species of butterfly, but according to you (2 November at 21.37) “complex lifestyles like the Monarch butterfly must be planned and designed. This cannot have come from a generic butterfly pattern. It is beyond the concept of an IM.” Since according to you the purpose of evolution was to produce humans, and the IM is capable of nothing more than “minor adaptations”, it follows that all species (broad sense) plus specially programmed “variations” like this one, plus a few million others, must be necessary for the existence of humans.
 
dhw: Your dilemma lies in not knowing how much autonomy your God gave to the inventive mechanism.....a dabble is feasible - but that means either he didn't know how to get to humans (hence the higgledy-piggledy), or he suddenly had a bright idea. To add to your convolutions, I forgot to mention that he would have had to preprogramme every environmental change as well.-DAVID: But I am settled on an interpretation of an inventive mechanism within guidelines. working off initial patterns. This gets rid of the dabble. I think the environment and the evolution of the universe follows physical principals, and God doesn't need to intervene. Chicxulub speeded up the appearance of mammals as dominant, but that would have eventually occurred anyway, just later.-So now we have the first cells preprogrammed with every single innovation leading from bacteria to humans, along with millions of Nature's Wonders like the monarch's lifestyle and the spider's silk. These intricate programmes had to be passed down through billions of years and generations and different organisms to produce the migratory monarch and the silky spider as vital steps along the way to humans. To add to the improbability, Chicxulub was not preprogrammed after all, and so these programmes depended on chance coming up with the right environment. Luckily for us there wasn't a Chicxulub right at the start to destroy those first cells with all their programmes! I'm surprised that your God was/is such a gambler.-dhw: The IM is an explanation of evolution, and I have repeatedly said the source might or might not have been your designer God. 
DAVID: Spetner calls the IM by another name, but he thoroughly believes in it. Our only argument is the degree of constraints on the adaptations. -Which is another way of saying that your dilemma lies in not knowing how much autonomy your God gave to the IM.-DAVID: We still don't know how speciation occurs. Spetner doesn't accept common descent. And he is right, even though evolution looks like common descent, there is no proof of it, only appearance.-I look forward to your report on Spetner's ideas, and especially to hearing his alternative to common descent. Speciation will look like whatever you want it to look like - evolution by mutation, IM, divine programming or dabbling, or separate creation. The different species are the dots, and the explanation depends on how we choose to join them (or not join them). But presumably Spetner does not believe that all forms of life, apart from the first, descended from earlier forms. -dhw: There is plenty of evidence that living forms can (a) acquire information, and (b) use it to change various parts of themselves. We have never witnessed the formation of new species (broad sense), so we don't know how much they can change. There is no evidence of a 3.7-billion-year computer programme or of God dabbling.-DAVID: Acquiring information about one's environment is obvious, but you cannot tell me how the genome acquires new information for speciation, because that is all Darwinian pipedream, and no one knows. -Of course no-one knows, and that's why all the theories are “pipedreams”. Your divine, 3.7-billion-year computer programme for all those organs, wonders and species geared to us humans is as dreamy as any pipe-smoker has ever dreamt.-dhw: I see no difference between irrational faith in energy somehow being consciously organized and irrational faith in energy somehow organizing itself into consciousness. The only rational element in both hypotheses is that consciousness exists, so it must have come into existence “somehow”. Of course you have faith that your “somehow” is right. So do atheists.
DAVID: It is not irrational that consciousness somehow appeared and it came from energy. That is the history we are dealing with. I fully doubt that natural events created consciousness, the point of Nagel's book. There must be a first cause. The stream of contingent of events must start somewhere and somehow.-If energy is the first cause, then clearly consciousness “somehow appeared and it came from energy” and the stream of contingent events “must start somewhere and somehow.” That's what the discussion is about: whether consciousness was always there, or emerged through some form of evolution. The fact that you “fully doubt” the latter does not make your beliefs any more rational or irrational than anyone else's.