Pre-programming evolution (Evolution)

by dhw, Thursday, January 22, 2015, 19:44 (3591 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: As far as fine tuning is concerned, the whole argument seems to me as inconclusive as the so-called anthropic principle. We have life, so the conditions that have led to that life must be conducive to life. Whether other conditions might lead to other forms of life we don't know. We can say, "This is how it is", but we can't say, "This is how it had to be" because we have nothing to compare it with.-DAVID: Fair enough, but when one looks at the required exactness, against the thought that the universe appeared by chance, your line or reasoning falls apart.-We don't know if life requires this exactness, since our conditions and our form of life are the only ones we know. There is no line of reasoning to fall apart. We don't have the knowledge to make claims either way. -dhw: As for your dilemma, David, which relates to the subject of this thread, you have conveniently omitted the third element, which we have spent so long discussing. You don't know to what extent organisms have been left to themselves to direct the course of evolution.
DAVID: But giving the organisms an IM is just a subsection of the design theory.-The origin of a possible IM is a different subject. We are dealing here with the course of evolution and your conviction that it had to be preprogrammed by your God or influenced by his dabbling. The IM hypothesis is a third option, regardless of its source.-dhw: ...unless the weaverbird's nest is crucial to the balance of nature and/or the production of humans, this nebulous argument falls apart. So your dilemma is not nearly as straightforward as you make it seem...
DAVID: I gave you weaverbirds' nests as an example of life's inventiveness. -No you didn't. You asked: “Why do all weaver birds' nests look so much alike? Set plans for the species. DHW seems to want the weaverbirds to have worked this out bit by bit until they got it right.” Your evolutionary scenario is based on your God planning everything right from the start or intervening, and when I challenge you on the relevance of the weaverbird's nest to the production of humans - which you insist was God's purpose all along - you resort to the nebulous argument of “balance of nature”. When I ask whether nature would be unbalanced without the nest, you leap to diversity:
 
DAVID: Look at the amazing diversity of life's inventions. For no reason or for purpose? I see purpose. It is the diversity I look at, not one lone form of nest. Big picture, forest, not trees.-I keep asking you what that purpose is, but the only purpose you come up with is the production of humans. I then point out that this does not fit in with the diversity, and I suggest that maybe the diversity is due to the first cells possessing an inventive mechanism (possibly God-given) which gave them the ability to do their own inventing, e.g. the weaverbird designing its own nest. And on a Monday you will agree that an IM is possible, but on a Tuesday you will revert to preprogramming and/or dabbling. Your big picture is full of holes in the form of non sequiturs.