Review of Spetner's book (Introduction)

by dhw, Friday, November 28, 2014, 15:29 (3648 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: ...With an IM, as I think about it, it initiates a modification by delving into available programs and guidelines, and the modification is kept consistent with the original patterns.-If conditions demand change, organisms either change or die. If they automatically implement preprogrammed changes, they have no autonomy. If they work the changes out for themselves, they are autonomous. What does “delving into available programs and guidelines” mean? Your monarch delved into all the programmes in its genome, and picked out the one marked “MONARCH: FOUR GENERATIONS, THEN FLY TO MEXICO. DON'T FORGET YOUR COMPASS”?-dhw: What is “the scheme of things”? Life will go on without us, just as life has gone on without the 99% of species that have become extinct. No species is necessary to “the scheme of things”, but all the current species are “here”.
DAVID: But we are not like anyone else. We are different in kind, and not an expected result of the evolutionary process we see. Back to Adler again.-Who expects what from the evolutionary process? Did you or your God expect the duckbilled platypus? Yes, we have highly advanced brains. Dogs have highly advanced noses, and plovers have highly advanced compasses. But this is not the point. See below.
 
dhw: Purpose? Every innovation serves to aid survival, propagation, and/or making life as enjoyable as possible for its own sake.
DAVID: Start life just for the fun of it? Why bother?-You've answered your own question in the next exchange.
 
dhw: God's purpose? To provide himself with a show, to produce art for art's sake, to conduct a scientific experiment? You can't tell me why he wanted to produce humans, so why should I have to tell you why he started evolution?
DAVID: Of course I can tell you. He now has thinking individuals with whom he can communicate. All that time alone in eternity is boring. I'm giving a reason in your style-And indeed it's a reason I've often proposed. So to relieve his boredom, it's perfectly feasible that he would start life for the fun of it and see where it would lead (= the show). You constantly ignore my alternative theistic version: that even if we are different in kind, it doesn't mean your God started out with the intention of producing us. Focusing on providing the golden plover with a compass and muscle power makes no sense if we were the purpose. Once again, the point of the IM hypothesis is to explain the higgledy-piggledy bush. It makes perfect sense if your God created the mechanisms of life and evolution to provide himself with a varied and unpredictable show, and maybe dabbled when he got fed up or had a new idea (which could include us oh-so-special humans).