EVOLUTION AND PURPOSE (Evolution)

by dhw, Thursday, December 03, 2015, 17:59 (3059 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: I have pointed out over and over again that my hypothesis is NOT a response to challenges, which would be adaptation, but the quest for improvement (the same as your drive to complexity) which leads organisms to find new ways of exploiting their (changed) environment.
DAVID: OK. We agree. Now, do organisms arrive at this ability on their own through evolution. I believe it was implanted.-The ability is the autonomous inventive intelligence, and I have always accepted the possibility that God “implanted” it. Your argument (with nebulous modifications, as below) has always been that organisms do not have the ability at all: either God has to preprogramme the innovations, or he has to dabble.-dhw:... You replied: ”I've accepted the possibility of individual inventiveness to some degree, but not to the extent you are proposing.” This is a very evasive reply.
DAVID: Not at all. I believe in pattern planning as I have described over and over. But not evasive, they may be allowed a degree of modification of the basic pattern. [...] To me, I am not evasive. In my mind the outline I see for theistic evolution to reach humans, it requires guidelines. -We have argued over and over again about the meaning of “guidelines”. I am trying to find out what degree of individual inventiveness you will accept, if any at all. We both accept natural and environmental limitations, and you say your God establishes the patterns (e.g. the prototype appendages). So is it possible in your estimation, without evasion, that God left the horse with the freedom to develop its own unidactyl hoof, and the weaverbird to design its own nest?-DAVID: You want total autonomy for the inventiveness because it fits your seat on the picket fence.-At the moment I just want an answer to the above question. -DAVID: You want everything neatly as you would have planned it. However, you are not God.” 
DHW: Quite right. I need hardly point out to you that you are not God either, and so each of us with our blinkers (you) or myopia (me) can go on groping through the darkness and goading each other!
DAVID: Let the goading continue! I am not blinkered. I simply don't see things as you do. You are still insisting that evolution follow your logic.-I don't insist, I hypothesize, whereas you have a fixed belief. Nor do I “want everything neatly planned as you would have planned it.” I don't “want” anything. I see the higgledy-piggledy bush, which you struggle to explain, and I ask how this fits in with the “arrow of purpose” you think you can see, and I suggest that the lack of neatness might mean God did not have your “arrow of purpose”. And so I look for other possible explanations.