Different in degree or kind: Egnor's take (Introduction)

by David Turell , Tuesday, October 11, 2016, 19:46 (2753 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: Once again: our starting point on this thread was the origin of human language, which entailed the range of animal sounds being vastly expanded by a readjustment of all the vocal organs. You insist that God did this with a dabble, and THEN humans learned how to use it. I suggest that with their enhanced awareness (= exploring new territory), they needed new sounds and, in trying to make them, they initiated the changes.

You can't make the new sounds unless the apparatus is present. The human desire made it happen? We cannot think improvements. They have to appear in new biologic forms, which must be created with planning to organize the new component parts. I'm still pointing out the gaps in form.

Now to answer your post: Since we have great changes and large gaps, what exactly were the “evolutionary advances” your God managed, if they were not transitional forms? As you have said yourself, either there were transitional forms, or there weren’t, in which case there was a giant leap (saltation) from fin to tikki leg to fully formed leg. What difference does either scenario make to my proposal that the switch from fins to legs was the result of need arising out of new conditions, as opposed to the prior provision of new structures which organisms must learn how to use?

I'll repeat. We only have large gaps between the transitional forms we have found. Your process only fits tiny steps, unless you want to claim that organisms themselves can create saltational-equivalent gaps in the record and solve the complex issues of coordinating new functional parts.

dhw: My hypothesis, however, depends on organisms being able to change their own structures (using perhaps God-given cellular intelligence).

I know that.

DAVID: Your 'form of evolvable intelligence' is the original provision of alternative pathways. Bacteria can solve problems of survivability on their own.

dhw: Alternative pathways are simply all the potential solutions to all the problems. It takes intelligence to work out which one fits. You appear to accept this, unless your second sentence is a misprint.

Not a misprint. You miss the point that bacteria have the ability to use alternative pathways if a primary pathway is no longer useful. All built in.

David’s comment (under “viper”): It certainly does raise questions as to how it evolved. Did this snake watch real vipers and learned how to change pupil shape? Not likely. When they evolved did they share common genes from a common ancestor? But this is a separate species, and this commonality is not mentioned in the article. Back to God stepping in? No clear explanation.

dhw: Unless of course what you consider unlikely is in fact likely: namely, that as well as changing in order to adapt to new conditions, organisms can change in order to protect themselves against predators. No need for God to keep stepping in if he simply gives organisms the ability to organize their own ways of survival.

The false viper had to watch the real viper and then say to itself, I need to change my eye pupils for safety. It is easy for you to say adaptation which we see happen, but in this circumstance it is not easy to imagine a way it might happen. Just as it is not easy to imagine how butterflies have fake eye camouflage. All mimicry might be saltations!

David’s comment (“Underwater caterpillars”): Again it is difficult to see how this developed in step by step evolution unless there was enough initial variation in the insects and the longest breath holders in floods survived and bit by bit descendent survivors developed the capacity.

dhw: Yes, all variations and innovations must take place in individuals, and it seems perfectly reasonable to suppose that each “improvement” originates in a few and is then perpetuated “bit by bit” as the few become the many. No need for God to keep stepping in if...(as above).

All I am pointing out is individual variation ( a 'la Darwin) provided by the way God had life develop in bell shaped curves of variety permits certain adaptive developments, which are lifestyle changes but not speciation.

David’s comment (under “engulfing photosynthesis”: The same process that resulted in mitochondria being made from engulfed bacteria. Could God have provided this mechanism to help evolution advance. Less dabbling for Him as a result.

dhw: It was precisely this process of endosymbiosis that formed the basis of Margulis’s theory of evolution, and the further we take the concept of intelligent cooperation, the less dabbling and preprogramming your God has to do. Like Shapiro and others, Margulis had no doubt that microorganisms are intelligent.

Yes they are built to act as if intelligent, but other than the editing of their DNA for adaptation without speciation they are automatic.