EVOLUTION AND PURPOSE (Evolution)

by dhw, Monday, December 07, 2015, 12:55 (3055 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: Perhaps there is a stage missing from this exchange. ...you said losing four toes means a loss of information. What does that have to do with the horse's autonomous ability to switch itself from pentadactyl to unidactyl? (And, in parenthesis, why bring "information" into the discussion?)
DAVID: Loss or deletion of information is an easier task than gaining or inventing information which is a problem is evolution, searching among trillion protein molecules to find the right ones for the function desired.-Ah! That is the missing piece. It doesn't invalidate the argument that the cells must cooperate, but it does draw a useful line between this particular modification and invention. Thank you.-dhw: So are you saying that other birds were able to design their own nests, but weaverbirds needed God's private tuition? 
DAVID: Neat twist of my words. I've simply said all birds know how to build their own. How they learned initially is the separate issue. We have no answer. The weaver nest is exceptionally complex, a woven bag with the entry at the top, so it becomes a prime example of the general issue, an extreme case to make the point.-How any organism learned to do anything initially is the problem we are trying to solve, and your reluctance to attribute autonomous inventive intelligence to the weaverbird is a “prime example of the general issue”, because it means that according to you all innovations, lifestyles and natural wonders require preprogramming or dabbling by your God. Here is an alternative explanation for the weaverbird's nest: early birds had the intelligence to realize it would be safer to make their homes in trees, and they used the available materials to build simple nests. The weaverbird has a particular flair for intelligent design, and his nest is therefore a lot more complex. It is not unusual in Nature for different species to come up with variations of greater or lesser complexity. They use what may be their God-given intelligence to work out their own solutions to problems.
 
Dhw: It is essential to your anthropocentric view of evolution that God “guided” it towards humans. I am suggesting that perhaps you might have misinterpreted what God was doing.
DAVID: Very likely. What you have done in our conversation is to demand that we delve into God's methods, looking at His most intimate operative details in producing evolution. I can only make the most simple of guesses, following my general and I think logical conclusion that if I accept evolution, and I have, God guided it. You want to understand God's methods exactly before you decide to accept Him. He doesn't work that way.-“He doesn't work that way” suggests you know how he works! For the sake of our discussions on this subject, I have at all times worn my theist hat, “accepted” God, but queried your very specific interpretation of his intentions and his methods: to produce humans, and to preprogramme or personally create innovations, lifestyles and wonders in order to balance Nature so that it will provide food for humans. I have offered a different interpretation of the way God may work. What is wrong with that? If God exists, every attempt to explain the nature of our world has to be an attempt to understand his intentions and his methods.
 
Dhw: I do not wonder WHETHER your God invented the horrors of carnivorousness, but WHY.
DAVID: Another example of your attempt to justify every aspect of the bush of life to fit your form of logic, before moving forward to some type of conclusion. You have just questioned God's motives. We might as well discuss why terrorists kill people. By your lights God could forbid it and stop them. I think lions have free will or at least freedom of action. And back balance of nature, it works best with both herbivores and carnivores. Wolves have been re-introduced to parts of the American West because the balance was way out of whack.-The terrorist analogy is out of kilter. I am not talking of forbidding and stopping. According to you, evolution has proceeded in accordance with what your God wanted, and so the concept of live creatures eating other live creatures was his invention. (In passing, I didn't know lions had the freedom of will and/or action to become vegetarian if they wanted to.) You have given me your explanation, and so I will simply express my surprise and regret that he could not have found a less horrific means of balancing Nature.