More Denton: Reply to David (Introduction)

by dhw, Wednesday, July 22, 2015, 14:27 (3412 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: I was questioning your logic. Clearly if the gaps are becoming more sharply defined, the fossil record is NOT becoming more complete.
DAVID: Check your logic. What is happening is the gap is sharper. What is before is filled with simplicity, and what is after is many new complex Cambrian specimens with coordinated complex organ systems. -Fair comment. We just have a different starting point. Mine is that the more gaps there are, the less complete is the record. Yours is that the more we find (= a more complete record), the wider the gaps.-DAVID: That takes planning, not shotgun attemps at improvement.-Why shotgun? We know that cell communities are capable of changing their structure in order to adapt to specific changes in the environment. There is nothing shotgun in such procedures. Do you think your God preprogrammed the first living cells 3.8 billion years ago with instructions for countless as yet non-existent organisms to alter their structures in accordance with every conceivable change in every conceivable environment (while countless other organisms were to be left out)? Or does he dabble in order to save one fish/bird/reptile/mammal while others perish? What other form of guidance can you envisage? The alternative is an autonomous mechanism (possibly designed by God) within these different cell communities, and my hypothesis is that the same mechanism may have been used innovatively as well as adaptively (the borderlines between the two are not always clear anyway) as a direct response - not a shotgun shoot-and-hope - to the opportunities that arose from environmental change.
 
dhw: The Cambrian illustrates why gradualism doesn't work. Exquisite planning applies to all organs, organisms, and Nature's Wonders. However, your assumption seems to be that only God and humans are capable of exquisite planning. 
DAVID: Pipe dream. Frankly, you don't understand biologic complexity at the basic physiologic levels.-Since your only alternative is divine preprogramming and/or dabbling, you will have to direct the same criticism at any biologist who doesn't believe in God.
 
dhw: If they [immune cells] can mutate at will a million times faster than normal for this one specified purpose, perhaps they can do the same for other purposes.-DAVID: A huge 'perhaps'. You have jumped on one very specialized set of cells and assume every cell can do this. They can't because they are not built that way.-It is not an assumption but a hypothesis, and it is not applied to every cell. In any cell community, as in any other community you can think of, some cells will organize and others will be organized.
 
dhw: And my point is that this tells us nothing about the innovations that led from bacteria to humans, or about the time needed for that development. Nobody knows how it happened. ....But you are only interested in bacteriologists whose research fits in with your own hypotheses.
DAVID: Lenski is not on my side. He is looking for the mechanism you desire to find, and not finding them.-Thank you for the correction. I don't suppose he's found your multi-billion-year computer programme either, but it's always reassuring to hear of bacteriologists who disagree with you.-DAVID: If evolution is defined as increasing complexity, a course it certainly seems to follow, what is more complex than humans? 
dhw: Who came up with that definition? I understand evolution as the process by which living organisms have developed from earlier ancestral forms.
DAVID: Of course the pattern of evolution is to create more complexity. It is a recognized observation. And what is more complex than the human brain?-I am not disputing that evolution creates more complexity, or that humans are in certain respects more complex than other organisms. I am disputing your definition. Another "pattern of evolution" is the "recognized observation" that when the environment changes, some organisms survive and others don't, but that is not how we define the term "evolution". However, the main thrust of my comment was that there is a vast difference between humans as the most complex organisms and humans as God's purpose for creating the universe. I am delighted to see you at last abandoning the second claim and focusing all your attention on the first.