DILEMMAS: A Response to DHW (Evolution)

by David Turell , Thursday, November 27, 2014, 01:01 (3648 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: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.)-Thank you for accepting that chance does not work. The terns follow coast lines. They might have figured it out and from habit patterns taught their DNA to pass it on to the chicks. But the plover had to discover the specks of Hawaii in the midst of the Pacific, and by your theory without preparation. I envision, which you can't seem to do, that the ability to migrate in general is a pattern, but the exact routes may have been worked in part by hunt and peck. Again the issue is general starting patterns, as Tony points out in computer programing, and then refinement. The IM refines. Tony explained this to you very clearly. I hope he comes back to help pound it home.
> 
> dhw: 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?-We are still at the same point. Wagner may be on to something in the protein search theory he has developed. It maybe that God incorporated such a search mechanism, but it had to contain information as to how to line up the molecules in order to carry out a function, since we know through Shapiro that organisms can modify their metabolism. Again, remember, all we know from DNA research at this juncture is how proteins are produced, what genes control what function, but we know nothing of how function is created. Lumber does not make a house function. It must have heat, water, electricity to function as a dwelling.
> 
> DAVID (under Review of Spetner): We are arguing autonomous vs. semiautonomous. I prefer the latter. That is our only difference.
> 
> dhw: 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. -I have no idea and neither do you how the plovers found it on their own, but my concept of the general pattern of migratory ability from the beginning allows for modifying routes later. Here's a way it could happen: God put a compass point into the plover. I've flown a route by compass during my flight lessons. It is easy if the plover can read the magnetic field ( and probably can). Think of all the animals I've pointed out that use a compass arrangement in travel. This is another initial pattern undoubtedly used in the first DNA programs. Once they found the islands, the establishment of instinct was easy. God does not do things the hard way.