Bacterial motors carefully studied (Introduction)

by dhw, Wednesday, April 06, 2016, 15:53 (3153 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: But your anthropocentric hypothesis still leaves us with the problem of 3.(whatever) billion years of dabbled or (for you too, unbelievably) preprogrammed innovations, lifestyles and natural wonders all somehow geared to the production of us!
DAVID: It is only a problem for you, not for me. There are only three possibilities for how evolution works, as discussed before: Natural chance, strict creation step by step (tony) or a process with guidelines. Without purpose and with purpose.-The fourth possibility for how evolution works (as opposed to how it all started) - which you now refuse even to include in your list - is that organisms have the autonomous power, whether God-given or not, to innovate, their purpose being to survive and/or improve.-David: Simple logic. Weaver nests are adaptations, no molecules, much simpler. We don't know how speciation occurs, but new molecules are required.
dhw: This is not in dispute. But this creates a dilemma for you If you grant other organisms the intelligence to work out their own lifestyles and natural wonders, maybe they can do more. It IS a maybe. Since we don't know how speciation occurs, and we don't know how cell communities transform themselves, we can only speculate.-DAVID: You are mixing apples and oranges. I'm discussing the new molecules needed for speciation, not adaptations. You are using the ability to create adaptations to try to presume that can lead to picking out new organic molecular arrangements for a new species! My dog can adapt. I can adapt, but I have no idea how to create a new species of me, even with my superior ability to conceive and plan. Genetic changes are not open to us living folks to fiddle with voluntarily, except on animals in a lab, note, again a third person approach.-Yes, the nest and the kidney are apples and oranges, but according to you, God had to “guide” (= preprogramme or personally organize) every innovation, lifestyle and natural wonder throughout the history of evolution. Whether you call the first weaver nest or the first monarch migration an adaptation or innovation therefore makes no difference: God did it all. However, there are different types of adaptation and innovation. The nest and migration are external adaptations/innovations, whereas cuttlefish camouflage or fish adaptation to pollution requires adjustments from the inside, and that is where I would suggest a possible link between evolutionary adaptation (preserving the status quo) and innovation (the unexplained process of speciation), since both processes entail adjustments made within the cell communities. The link is a hypothesis based on the fact that we know cell communities make changes to themselves (adaptation), and some scientists tell us cells are intelligent beings. But there is no presumption.-The remainder of your post deals with the same point, and culminates in the following conclusion: “My thesis remains the same. God guided evolution. The details you want answered are secondary.” Wanting to know how a hypothesis fits the facts it is meant to explain does not seem to me to be secondary, and I think you are quite right to query the likelihood of my own hypothesis on the grounds that we have no evidence to prove that cell communities are intelligent enough to fill the major gaps that are involved in speciation. Of course I could say to you: “My thesis remains the same. Autonomously intelligent cell communities guided evolution. The details you want answered are secondary.” But I shan't. If there are flaws in a hypothesis, one should acknowledge them.