More about how evolution works: multicellularity (Evolution)

by dhw, Sunday, November 08, 2015, 13:49 (3085 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: Regardless of Simon Conway Morris's beliefs, I'm sorry, but I still can't see how 25 separate evolutions can be taken as evidence for the planning of a single species.-DAVID: His book explains his thesis. Of course I feel he makes a strong point: If life's evolution can invent an advance in necessary complexity 5-6 times, as in eye development, and he describes many other convergences, then the process of evolution is programmed to produce the necessary complexity to produce humans. -I am very happy with the concept of convergence, which fits in perfectly with the concept of the intelligent cell, and we all know that evolution produced the necessary complexity to produce humans, since we are here. It also produced the necessary complexity to produce the duck-billed platypus which is here too, and dinosaurs which are not here. You can repeat your anthropocentric theory as often as you like, but if you can't explain why 25 evolutions of multicellularity are necessary to produce one species, perhaps that is because your theory might be wrong. 
 
DAVID: In the past we have discussed a possible 'inventive mechanism'. Conway Morris' convergence is his attempt at that concept. Living organisms have invented the same thing many times over as his book illustrates.-Again, I am happy to accept convergence, to which most of your post is devoted. Your concept of the inventive mechanism is totally different from mine, which is autonomous, whereas yours is preprogrammed (though you sometimes try to disguise its automaticity with the weasel word “semi-autonomous”). Convergence only tells us that the same thing has been invented “many times over”. It doesn't tell us what did the inventing. You have read Conway Morris's book. If, as a theist, he does not specify his belief in your 3.8-billion-year computer programme for all innovations or that all 25 evolutions of multicellularity were directly dabbled by his God, you cannot call on him for support. Who knows, he might even believe that his God endowed living organisms with the intelligence to invent things for themselves!-DAVID: If the instructions are within the organism for inventions, then they invent. Remember I think the odds are 90% those instructions exist.-Once more you are trying to blur the dividing lines. The invention is done by the ”mind” that issued the instructions. The odds are 100% that the “instructions” exist, since the inventing took place. The question, as always, is where the instructions came from: your God's 3.8-billion-year programme, his direct intervention, or an autonomous intelligence which he may have invented. (See also under “brain complexity”.)