Logic and evolution (Introduction)

by dhw, Wednesday, July 20, 2016, 12:47 (3047 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Bacteria were/are perfectly happy for 3.6 billion years. Why the improvement/advance? There is no natural answer.
dhw: A natural answer: Single cells merged (perhaps by luck) and found that the merger led to some kind of improvement. So some single cells went on being single cells, but others went on merging and cooperating. In the course of time, cell communities went on creating improvement after improvement. And now here we are! (NB It may be your God who gave cells/cell communities the intelligence to know what is good for them, and to know how to make use of new opportunities.)-DAVID: I would remind you luck is the same as chance which you have rejected. Any other approach?-I said “perhaps by luck”. I have always argued against luck/chance in the context of how evolution progresses (= Darwin's random mutations). But that does not preclude chance at the beginning of the process, as a no more improbable starting point than an eternal and sourceless inventive mind deciding to introduce Cell A to Cell B. Nobody knows how it all began. But you claimed there was no natural answer to the question of improvement/advance. Once the first merger took place, I have offered you a natural explanation. Why do you consider the above scenario to be unnatural? -Dhw: …research has NOT found that new structures can be created without adding new “information”. 
DAVID: You are presenting a negative. We have no research on new organs or new species development. we don't know how that happens. All we have found is gene changes in adaptations of existing organisms in which information is often removed.-I was responding to the following exchange:
ME: How a new structure can be created without adding new “information” is beyond my comprehension.
YOU: But that is what research has found. Accept it if you believe science can advance our knowledge. (My bold)-No, research has not found that, and so I will not accept it! But thank you for proving my point for me.-dhw: You still haven't told us how some of the guys managed to work out ways to resist the new invention of antibiotics.
DAVID: Did you read what I wrote or wasn't it clear? Bacteria can use alternate existing metabolic pathways to get around antibiotic blockades or use horizontal transfers.-But you believe bacteria to be automatons. This can only mean your God must have dabbled, or preprogrammed the first cells to provide some bacteria with special metabolic pathways to deal with the invention of antibiotics 3.8 billion years later, and those bacteria passed on (horizontal transfer) the metabolic pathways to other bacteria who had not been provided with them. Or could it be that some bacteria were able to work out for themselves how to deal with the new threat, and passed the information on to others?
 
dhw: How does a bacterium adapt in order to create resistance to a new invention without “additional information”? (Please define information if you disagree with what I wrote above.) 
DAVID: Explained above.-Not explained above. Antibiotics were a new invention. An invention by definition will contain new information. You said that an organism's internal information is the instructions or plans it uses to “run life” (your words). How, then, is it logically possible to say that a new threat (new information) does not require new instructions/plans (new information)?
 
DAVID: My 'coyness' was due to the fact I was trying to comment only from a scientific standpoint. My theistic viewpoint you know well. Either all the info was present from the beginning or God adds it. Genetic studies of adaptations suggests all the info could have been present in the beginning. No more.
dhw: And how right you are to be coy. Once again, you talk about “all the info”. Do genetic studies of adaptations "suggest" that every environmental change (= external information) and every innovation (e.g. the internal information on how to create a kidney) and every natural wonder (e.g. the information on how a weaverbird should build its nest) was preprogrammed 3.8 billion years ago? If it doesn't, there is no way you can claim that science suggests that “all the info could have been present at the beginning.”-DAVID: Since many adaptations are accompanied by information loss, it is possible to infer that much of evolution is due to loss of initial information, since adaptation is the only examples we have that are well studied.-“Accompanied by” is hugely different from “due to”, but at least you are now qualifying your observations with “many adaptations” and “much of evolution”. Why “initial information”? Adaptations take place in existing organisms, most of which have added masses of information since the beginning. It stands to reason that if conditions change, some existing information will no longer be relevant, and so the adaptive changes may indeed be “accompanied by” information loss. All totally irrelevant to the problem of innovation, which by my definition is completely impossible without new information. But your argument might become clearer if only you would explain what you mean by “all the information needed for evolution”.