DILEMMAS: A Response to DHW (Evolution)

by dhw, Wednesday, November 26, 2014, 13:09 (3648 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: It is not beyond the bounds of credibility that for whatever reason the first tern got fed up with its environment and went off exploring (just as humans must have done).
DAVID: [...] So the first bird just took off for warmer climes and kept flying until he found a nice spot thousands of ocean miles away, without any proper muscle or fat-storage preparation. It is beyond credibility which is why I used the fact. the entire chapter is beyond development by chance which is exactly what you are suggesting. I repeat, migration is a part of the original patterns as life was programmed.-You had asked how the tern (or now the golden plover) knew of the whereabouts and existence of Hawaii, which suggests God programmed the first cells to pass on a route map. Now you are switching to body strength. Neither of us knows how this evolved (maybe explorations just went further and further afield). I'm NOT suggesting the migratory lifestyle is by chance. This is your constant escape route. The whole point of the inventive mechanism hypothesis is that organisms deliberately devise new ways of coping with or exploiting the environment. You claim that God preprogrammed the first cells with a route map for every single migratory organism. I suggest that the organisms found their routes by themselves. (It remains open whether a god designed the inventive mechanism.)
 
dhw: So 3.7 billion years ago your God designed 40 different mechanisms to enable the E. coli to enjoy life in the guts of animals that would appear a few billion years later, and this would provide a constant source of energy, much to the delight of the humans for whose benefit he created the E. coli in the first place. I wonder what Wagner (and victims of E. coli) will have to say about that hypothesis.-DAVID: What Wagner says is that life has many survival mechanisms so as to defeat challenges. Backup systems are present, not just a single inflexible approach. It all looks planned to me.-I am not disputing the idea of planning, but am suggesting that the E.coli worked out its own digestive mechanisms as and when needed, instead of God preprogramming them 3.7 billion years ago. You have not commented on the 3.7-billion-year scenario I have outlined above. Do you or do you not find such a hypothesis pretty absurd?-DAVID (under Review of Spetner): We are arguing autonomous vs. semiautonomous. I prefer the latter. That is our only difference.-The difference between us is indeed the degree of autonomy, and I would like to pin you down. For instance, in the case of the golden plover, you have argued that the “first” plover was incapable of knowing where Hawaii was or if it even existed. This means God must have put a route map in the very first cells. Please explain in concrete terms which part of its migration process is semi-autonomous. (See also under Review of Spetner.)