Why sex evolved; no one knows (Introduction)

by dhw, Wednesday, June 29, 2016, 13:36 (3071 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: God provided a drive to complexity, which is what evolution shows.
dhw: But he could have provided a drive to complexity in the form of individual intelligences working out their own means of survival and/or improvement (which clearly entailed increased complexity), as opposed to your excruciatingly complicated 3.8-billion-year programme and/or dabbling.-DAVID: Complexity requires mental planning. What did your version of God put into your supposed cell intelligence to provide the ability for speciation? I expect you cannot answer.-Speciation occurs through innovation, and in my version the cells have the intelligence to restructure themselves into new forms. Your God didn't have to “put” anything into that intelligence. Intelligence is enough!
 
dhw: You can't think of a reason why he [God] would want to design it [the nest], and you don't know how he “helped”, but you doubt that he could have provided the weaverbird with the intelligence to do it. Why?
DAVID: Easy. God is in control in my version of theistic evolution.-So if you believe it, it must be true, even though it doesn't make sense even to you. With my hypothesis, there is no need to even try and explain why or how God designed it. He didn't. He enabled the weaverbird to do it. Simple!
 
DAVID: Why don't you like His obvious method? Because you like your way of doing things which is logical. God's logic, from the evidence is to complexify and scattergun resultant creatures.
dhw: That fits in with my hypothesis and not yours! If your God preprogrammed or dabbled the weaverbird's nest or different forms of hominin, it was NOT scattergun. It's only scattergun if your God leaves organisms to do their own inventing.-DAVID: The h-p bush looks scattergun.
 
Like you, I think it is scattergun. But that argues against every new organism and natural wonder being purposely preprogrammed or dabbled by your God, and in favour of him creating a free-for-all.-DAVID: Why not think God did it on His own? He would have to pre-program intelligent organisms which is quite a complicated approach compared to direct action by Him. Dabble always is a possibility.
(Also, under “amphibious centipede”): 
DAVID: I admit God could have made cells so intelligent they create new full-blown species, but He would have had to load them with precise programming, which is more complicated than taking direct dabble action. -If he loaded them with precise programming, they would not have had to be intelligent at all! They would be automatons. You are now trying to offload your 3.8-billion-year programme onto my hypothesis! The intelligent cell would NOT be programmed. It has the intelligence to do its OWN inventing. However, I don't mind getting rid of that wretched 3.8-billion-year computer programme of yours, and am delighted to see you at last recognizing its unnecessary complexities. But even if you are now inclined to discard it in favour of dabbling, I'm afraid I still find myself wondering why your God would then personally keep intervening to design the weaverbird's nest, the centipede's underwater apparatus, the cuttlefish's camouflage, and to fiddle with all those different hominins etc., just to create homo sapiens. Something still doesn't quite add up, does it?-dhw: (under “amphibious centipede”): Once again, I can only ask what on earth would be the point of adding complexity just for the sake of complexity? 
DAVID: It may not be logical to human thought, but the h-p bush shows just that.
-You say your God is always in control, and yet in the next breath you have him scattergunning complexities that have no particular purpose other than to be complex! Every innovation (which would add to the complexity by providing something that was not there before) that led to speciation (broad sense) that led to the higgledy-piggledy bush must have functioned in some way, or it would not have survived to become part of the bush.
 
DAVID: All hypotheses are unproven guesses based on what is observed, nothing more, nothing written in stone. Again, what God does may not fit human logic. Until we discover how speciation works, and we may never if it is a result of God's direct action (Saltation), then our hypotheses are moot.-But you are all in favour of logic when you challenge the atheist's faith in chance. It's only when the illogicality of your own hypothesis is exposed that you suddenly deny the value of human logic. Of course all the hypotheses are “moot”. That is why we discuss and test them to try and clarify the issues.