Logic and evolution (Introduction)

by dhw, Saturday, July 23, 2016, 10:30 (3047 days ago) @ David Turell

David: I have presented this article previously. (Wednesday, July 20, 2016, 14:03) It encompasses my thinking completely[/i:
http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/the-highly-engineered-transition-to-v...
QUOTE: [i]I will state now in advance the point that I am trying to make here: each of the transitions described requires tons and tons of new, original, highly specific functional information.-dhw: Exit your theory that innovation is caused by loss of information.
DAVID: Not entirely. Since adaptation often is accompanied by loss of info, it is very possible some degree of innovation may result from loss of info.-Once again: “accompanied by” does not mean “caused by”. There is no evidence and no logical reason for the argument that INNOVATION can be CAUSED (as opposed to accompanied) by loss of information.-DAVID: The advances are totally unexplained, not understood and require mental planning to coordinate all the new parts.
dhw; So why would it be unnatural for sentient, cognitive, decision-making beings to design and coordinate their new parts (allowing for your God giving them these powers)? You asked for a “natural” explanation and I gave you one. The fact that you prefer to believe in preprogramming/ dabbling does not make my hypothesis “unnatural”.
DAVID: As long as they are God-given, your theory can be accepted. What is the agnostic theory?-Thank you, but in discussions on how evolution works, the question is not whether those powers are God-given, but whether those powers actually exist. (I accept that they are hypothetical.) It is as illogical to say that those powers only exist if God designed them as it would be to say those innovations only took place if God designed them. There is no such thing as “the” agnostic theory. My hypothesis is that cell communities may have their own inventive powers, and I do not know how they arose, but there are two hypotheses regarding their origin (God and chance), neither of which I can accept.
 
DAVID: ...it is still possible that God pre-loaded all the information in the beginning, and since He also was running the evolution of the universe He knew what environmental pressures would be brought to bear on developing organisms and set up preparatory changes for them. That or He dabbled. I'm stuck.
dhw: So you must go back to speciation being the result of your God dabbling, i .e. adding rather than subtracting information. Therefore all the information required for evolution cannot have been present at the beginning, and evolutionary advances cannot have been caused by loss of information. Agreed?-DAVID: With the evidence that adaptation can be due to loss of info, I cannot accept your dogmatic statement. I want to keep all possibilities: preplanning with some loss possible, and dabbling.-I am talking about “all the information being present at the beginning”, and loss of information being responsible for innovation (not for adaptation). You have totally ignored the argument that led up to the paragraph you have quoted! The beginning means the first cells. So please say if you truly believe that the first cells contained all the information needed for every species that ever existed, and so each species had to lose the information required for every other species (e.g. the platypus had to lose all the information required to make a human and an elephant so that it could be left with nothing but its platypusness). Conversely, if information had to be added (God dabbling), then all the information cannot have been present at the beginning. That is not dogma, that is logic.