Darwin & Wallace (Evolution)

by dhw, Saturday, October 03, 2015, 12:32 (3127 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw:If you reread my post, you will see that you have simply expanded on my point that “only adaptation, not innovation, was needed if organisms were to survive environmental change”. However, here you give humans as a “prime example”, whereas elsewhere you have used the “need” argument to suggest that humans are the exception and indeed the purpose. My point, once more, is that EVERY innovation, whether related to humans or not, was “against need”, and so that argument offers no justification for your anthropocentrism.-DAVID: You are missing my point, and perhaps I'm not expressing it well: evolution advances by speciation, and we are not sure simple epigenetic adaptations result in speciation. Therefore if new species arise when 'need' is not there, to my way of thinking this is why a God-guided process is required. Theistic evolution, a form of Tony's view, is my view.-Your first point is the same as mine: speciation advances by innovation, not by adaptation. We do not know how or why this happened, since there was no need for ANY innovation. If you are now dropping your oft repeated argument that “no need” bolsters your case for humans as God's purpose, I shall be delighted. If you think “no need” bolsters the case for guidance, we are back to the question of what sort of guidance. The ‘autonomous inventive mechanism' does not preclude God - it merely precludes God's preprogramming or direct creation of all the innovations, lifestyles, ‘odd twigs' and natural wonders that make up life's history. -DAVID: Your view wants to give some credence to God in control, but not completely in control. He has the power to fully control if He cooked up this life-permitting universe, and your approach does not tell us where the new genetic information needed for new species comes from.-We are not discussing your God's power - though according to you, he probably doesn't control the environment - but the way he chooses to exercise his power. My approach entails organisms using their (God-given?) intelligence at cellular level to process the information from the environment and alter themselves accordingly, instead of your God altering them directly or preprogramming them to do so 3.8 billion years ago. Nobody knows how it works (I agree with your chemistry professor), and that is why we come up with our different hypotheses. -dhw: This is where you have to decide whether the weaverbird's nest, the monarch's lifestyle, the wasp's egg-laying required your God's preprogramming/dabbling or not. “Guidance” won't do.-DAVID: I don't have to decide, and guidance will do, because I don't see how species arrive for no good reason of need.-Quite right, you don't have to. Badly phrased. You can remain agnostic on the question. However, once we accept that there is a drive to complexity or “improvement”, we look at the Turellian theory that humans are God's purpose for this drive, and we ask why God would need to personally design the weaverbird's nest or - if we want to focus on species - the long extinct Jabberwockus Carrolliensis in order to produce or feed humans. And, with my theist hat on, I can't help feeling it doesn't add up. Whereas the idea that the prototype weaverbird designed its own nest, regardless of the need to produce/feed humans, seems to me to make more sense. -dhw: The thanks are reciprocated. These discussions have arisen out of the marvellous array of scientific articles that you provide us with, and long may the exchanges continue!
DAVID: As long as I can think to counter your objections.-I'm sure you will do so, if only because you are as stubborn as me!