Humans, Dogs and oxytocin (Introduction)

by dhw, Saturday, September 26, 2015, 18:29 (3345 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: I'm not irrational about God. He might be able to do anything He wants. You are the doubting one, but then you are agnostic, and full of doubt.-The irrationality lies in your interpretation of your God's methods and intentions: the hypothesis that he can do anything he wants does not lend any credence to the theory that he specially designed the weaverbird's nest as part of his plan to produce humans. Ditto the billions of other innovations and organisms and lifestyles extinct and extant. Anything he wants would also cover an autonomous intelligence enabling organisms to design their own nests and to pursue their own purposes, succeeding or failing, regardless of humans. -dhw: If I were to stop asking you to fill the gaps in your preprogramming, dabbling, guiding, anthropocentric view of evolution, would you stop asking me to fill the gaps in my view of evolution directed by cellular intelligence?-DAVID: I'll stop if you quit using it and we'll move on.-No deal. If you think the first cells could contain all these billions of detailed, automated programmes, I see no reason why I shouldn't think they could contain the intelligence to devise new programmes as new generations learned to communicate and cooperate. And surprise, surprise, many biologists actually believe that cells are cognitive, intelligent beings. Ah, but you know that!
 
DAVID: You haven't commented on the article which covers the entangled, but purposeful mess of mechanisms in humans that controls blood pressure. How does Darwinian evolution figure out how to provide the interlocking, coordinated and circular feedback mechanisms?-http://www.evolutionnews.org/2015/09/controlling_blo099611.html-There is a distinction here that needs to be stressed yet again. I have always accepted the complexity argument in favour of design, and am sceptical about random mutations. We have long ago rejected that side of Darwin's theory. Once more: It is your own anthropocentric account of your God's intentions and methods that is in dispute here.
 
In passing (as you have pointed out), this article also offers a slightly less direct attempt to discredit Darwin's theory by distortion and over-generalization:
“Evolutionary biologists seek to tell us how life came into being.”-Some biologists do, but the theory of evolution doesn't. The article quotes Malcolm Muggeridge: "I myself am convinced that the theory of evolution, especially to the extent to which it has been applied, will be one of the greatest jokes in the history books of the future. Posterity will marvel that so very flimsy and dubious an hypothesis could be accepted with the incredible credulity it has."”-The whole theory? Will the world be converted to Creationism? Muggeridge may well have been right about “the extent to which it has been applied” - my Dawkins quote is enough to illustrate that - but there seems little sign that the world regards as flimsy and dubious the theory that all forms of life except the first have descended from earlier forms. That is the meaning of evolution, and even Muggeridge's Catholic religion has accepted it.