Bacterial motors carefully studied (Introduction)

by dhw, Friday, April 01, 2016, 14:13 (3158 days ago) @ David Turell

I am telescoping three different posts here, as they all deal mainly with the same argument.-dhw (under “cavefish”): I can only respond to what you tell me about his [Denton's] book, so perhaps this response is unfair.
DAVID: Not unfair.
dhw: Then it would seem, alas, that Denton has taught us nothing new.-DAVID: Only to help destroy Darwin's gradualist approach and bring back a consideration of structure first for an initial methodology for evolution. To me that offers God first with my favorite pre-planning concept, i.e., God set up initial patterns of form in living animals and plants, and designed organic chemistry in planned molecules for easier methods for advances appearing.-Since even Huxley expressed his doubts, and punctuated equilibrium has been on the table since 1972, I'm surprised anyone needs more help in opposing gradualism. I discussed structuralism and functionalism in my last post, but am interested in your “planned molecules for easier methods for advances appearing”. Easier than what? (See below) I presume this simply means God preprogrammed the molecules/cells with every single evolutionary innovation, lifestyle and natural wonder.-dhw: All the theories so far seem like “just-so” stories if we tell them that way. 
DAVID: Skipped the just-so's which are wonderfully inventive. But the giraffe series shows the usual jumps, nothing in tiny changes:-http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2015/10/07/how-giraffes-became-winners-by-a-neck/
David's comment: No just-so here! Only jumps in phenotype.-We have made a giant saltation from bacteria to giraffes! Once again, I can only point out that all such examples suggest independent evolution, with organisms devising their own structural variations and innovations which survive if they work. The idea that ALL of these “jumps” were preprogrammed in the very first cells, or your God personally organized every one of them - not to mention that he did so in order to produce or feed humans, and not to mention the fact that the programme would have to cope with every environmental change - does not sound like an “easier method” to me. There is a similar problem with your post on fish filters:-http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2016/160329/ncomms11092/full/ncomms11092.html-David's comment: A very complex engineering article which basically says directed vortices of water flow keep the filters clean, a system better than current human inventions for filtering. How is a natural process of evolution able to invent such complex solutions better than thinking humans seem able to do? Possibly a better mind behind it all.-Not necessarily a better mind, but perhaps different minds. Same problem as with the giraffe. I find it hard to imagine a less “easy” method than the programme decribed above. If you want an “easier method”, and discounting the ability of blind chance to produce such complex mechanisms, individual inventive intelligences - perhaps originally created by your God and left to do their OWN thing for their OWN purposes - will fit the bill. Yes, we've been over this again and again, but so long as you revert to your favourite divine "pre-planning concept", I will revert to my alternative! It's called an “agnostic balance of nature”.