Why sex evolved; no one knows (Introduction)

by dhw, Monday, June 20, 2016, 18:22 (3076 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: You have separated the two parts of my sentence, but they go together. The key difference between us is your attempt to explain the whole higgledy-piggledy bush of evolution as being preprogrammed or dabbled in order to produce humans. (We discovered that “the balance of nature” just meant the continuation of life, and that does not require humans.)
DAVID: Correct. The balance OF nature is only a mechanism to let the necessary energy supply continue to provide energy so life can continue to evolve.-It therefore provides no explanation whatsoever for the course evolution has taken. -dhw: This is why we have spent so much time on the weaverbird's nest. Why would your God have specifically designed such wonders for our sake? 
DAVID: God used evolution as a process to produce humans. The weaver bird fits into it own balance of nature in its ecologic niche. Tying the bird to us is a straw man argument. The bird is small part of an overall process.-It is anything but a straw man, since you insist that your God specially designed it, even though his aim was to produce humans. Previously you clung to the “balance of nature” explanation, which we now agree is irrelevant. The colossal variety of life, with 99% of species going extinct, clearly has nothing whatsoever to do with the production of humans, and so if your God exists, there has to be another reason for his special design of the nest and the millions of other natural wonders. If you can't find one, perhaps you will consider the possibility that he did NOT specially design the nest, but gave the weaverbird and all its fellow miracle-workers the means of devising their own wonders. (See below for why.)-dhw: And if his final target was homo sapiens, what do you mean by “we need to consider” a scattergun hominin group? Again I would ask why your God created “multiple choice” programmes for all the different hominins if he just wanted homo sapiens.
DAVID: Again the process He seems to prefer: what I have described as shotgun advances of complexity. Complexification is an overarching principle of the evolutionary process we observe.-This is the process that happened. If he exists, then of course it's the process he prefers, but it clearly runs counter to your hypothesis that he has preprogrammed it to produce homo sapiens. The higgledy-piggledy evolution of humans, just like that of all other species extinct and extinct, suggests that his reason for using this process was to produce higgledy-piggledy evolution! The best way to do that would have been to give organisms their own individual means of innovating (with the proviso that he could dabble). Why would he want the higgledy-piggledy? Ah, we must try to read God's mind - which you don't like doing, apart from insisting that you know his purpose - but since we are apparently in his image, maybe he thought it might be more interesting than having a whole load of clockwork toys that couldn't do anything without his “guidance”.-I agree with you completely, however, that complexification is an overarching principle when we consider the development from single cell to ourselves. That is why, in passing, I cannot make head or tail of the “front end loading” gene-loss article, which suggests the exact opposite.
 
dhw: It makes far more sense to me that (theistic version) he enabled organisms to do their own designing, punctuated by the odd dabble. In other words, it is your anthropocentric, homo sapiens interpretation of the whole history of evolution that is the key difference between us. (See the “Talbott” thread for more.)
DAVID: I look at the overall impression of 'process'. I am a 'lumper' trying to see design processes existing in evolutionary history. You seem to be a 'splitter' worrying about the weaver bird, which is an inconsequential side issue that only raises the dabble issue, nothing more.-I wish you did look at the overall impression of ‘process'. Your vision seems to me to focus on humans and to offer no explanation of the seemingly chaotic comings and goings of life's history, with its vast variety of species and natural wonders that have nothing to do with humans. If you really want to be a ‘lumper', you need to find a reason for the whole higgledy-piggledy, and that means finding a reason for the weaver bird's nest as well as for the human brain.