More Denton: Last essay of a 3 part series (Introduction)

by dhw, Thursday, July 16, 2015, 09:18 (3418 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: Darwin proposed random mutations which would provide advantages in any milieu, and his gradualism required bridging groups. On both counts, you and I are sceptical. [...] my alternative is an autonomous inventive mechanism [...] There is no bridging group, randomness, or even selection pressure (as the goal is improvement rather than survival). 
DAVID: The problem with your comment is evolution is clearly seen to progress with great jumps and starts, and this not explained in Darwin theory at all. -My theory is not Darwin's theory! I have said that you and I reject gradualism. Innovations produced by the inventive mechanism would have to work straight away (in leaps) or they would not survive.-DAVID: [...] since this 'intelligence' must contain basic information to work with as it makes decisions, where did the information come from? How do cells decide what to invent....?-As always, you ask for the source, and as always I don't know, but it might be your God. Our subject is not the source but how evolution works, and I offer an alternative to chance and your divine preprogramming or dabbling. Perhaps cells decide like humans: if conditions are right, they experiment. If successful, the innovation survives; if not, it perishes. -dhw: EXTRA: “[...] Assuming that brain size is a marker of intellectual ability, Wallace reasoned that prehistoric man did not use his brain to its capacity [...].
"Ancient African hunters were equipped with all the basic linguistic and cognitive potential that modern human beings share. These they never used." 
dhw: This is like saying evolution should have happened in a day! The first cell was also “an instrument beyond the needs of its possessor”, since bacteria did not need to evolve. Every innovation has therefore led to organs and organisms of a kind and degree far beyond what was “required”. 
DAVID: And this is the point I have continuously made. this brain arrived with lots more capacity than used, and indicates my point of pre-planning. Another example of the giant leaps in evolution not under selection pressure.-Every human invention, like every evolutionary innovation, is a leap. Just as the potential of the cell unfolded through evolution, so did the potential of the brain. Nobody knows the extent to which ancient African hunters used that potential. “Never used” sounds absurd to me: didn't they communicate, or devise strategies for their hunting? And it seems equally absurd to me to assume that if a potential (e.g. cell or brain) is not completely fulfilled on the spot, that means it's been planned! -dhw: The mystery for me is the source of the mechanism, not the evolution of its products (which include language).
DAVID: Of course the first cells contained a mechanism for evolution. it is called information implanted in the genome. It is your mystery, not mine.-This allows for both hypotheses: it might mean information that enabled the mechanism to do its own autonomous inventing, or information that preprogrammed every single innovation that led from bacteria to humans, including the weaverbird's nest and a billion other natural wonders along the way. Which seems more likely? -Dhw: If we believe in common descent, every innovation must have taken place within existing organisms. “Evolution from scratch” suggests separate creation, but once again, the internal factor governing innovation could be an inventive mechanism or “brain” contained within the cell/cell community.
DAVID: The part you have not quoted is the point in the essay about ORFan genes, ones that pop up out of nowhere to help produce the giant leaps in evolution. This is a discontinuity in genomic evolution, and very anti-Darwin.-Yet again: I reject Darwin's gradualism. My hypothesis EXPLAINS the leaps, it doesn't ignore them.
 
dhw: EXTRA: "One of the most curious aspects of the almost universal acknowledgement that the cosmos is fine-tuned for life is the failure to take the next logical step and infer that nature is fine-tuned, as well, for the origin and evolution of life...”
Dhw: [...] it is a powerful argument for theism. The counter argument, as I see it, would be the addition of “as we know it”, applied both to the cosmos and to life. We have no idea if a different cosmos would have resulted in different forms of life or no life at all, and this brings us back to the wretched “anthropic principle”, which can be used equally to support theism and atheism. 
DAVID: We only know carbon-based life. The anthropic principle is circular garbage which, I disagree, does not support theism. And if there is a different possible cosmos with a different life, it would be just as miraculous.-As I understand it, the principle allows for teleology (purposeful design) or different universes, ours being the lucky one. Dawkins agrees with you, though: “It is a strange fact, incidentally, that religious apologists love the anthropic principle. For some reason that makes no sense at all, they think it supports their case.” (The God Delusion, p. 136). I mention it only because you will be delighted to have Dawkins on your side! Yes, life is a miracle. That tells us nothing about whether this or any other life-bearing universe was fine-tuned by a god.