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

by David Turell , Friday, October 14, 2016, 02:09 (2963 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: That is the nub of the matter. I will stick to my point that we don’t know how much planning capacity they have. However, you wrote: “Yes they are built to act as if intelligent, but other than the editing of their DNA for adaptation without speciation they are automatic.” I pointed out that the non-automatic ability to edit DNA might enable multicellular organisms to create new structures, to which your response was the same as above. Subjective opinion dogmatically asserted as fact.

Not fact, but my firm opinion, to which I am joined by others.

DAVID: I repeat, all we see is gaps around the few transitional forms in the fossil library. Your reliance on transitional forms suggests you are imagining a series of tiny step transitions. They don't exist! The gaps strongly imply saltation.

dhw: It is you who keep talking of tiny steps. But maybe there were. Maybe Tikki Jr had slightly more leggy legs than Tikki Sr. Who knows?

Once again, the evidence is huge gaps, no tiny steps. We must work with the evidence we have and then hypothesize.

dhw: Your own theory requires changes from fins to tikkilegs to fully formed legs. Do you believe your God preprogrammed/dabbled more transitional forms or a straight saltation? Whichever it is, I can hypothetically ascribe to my intelligent cells. Hypothetically, anything your God can do, his (theistic version) inventive mechanism can do.

And your theory, sans your theistic nod to God, requires intense accurate planning to jump the gaps. Requires a mind to plan the new complex form across he gap.

dhw: You make it sound as if the millions of problems bacteria have solved are a simple choice between right and left. You know as well as I do that they have mastered virtually every environment, solving nearly every survival problem thrown at them.

Yes they have evolved into every extreme environment. As God created life, He may well have set them up to all types of survival

dhw: Human beings have also mastered many environments. Do we do it automatically by walking left or right?

No, no, it was our mental capacities, I agree.

dhw: Yes indeed, organisms do what they are able to do. That also applies to you and me, but it doesn’t make us automatons.

Neat flip of straw men. Bacteria can conquer all environments. They evolved to do that from the first simple forms. And automatically function in all the places they live. Isn't God's control of evolution amazing?

DAVID: You can't imagine God stepping in. I can. He bothered to start a universe with life.

dhw: That is not what I said. If he exists, then of course he stepped in. But I can’t imagine him stepping in to give false vipers and butterflies lessons in how to camouflage themselves. Nor, frankly, can I imagine that he believed the false viper’s eye camouflage essential to preserve the balance of nature to provide food to keep life going so that humans could appear.

The bold above is what I believe. I know you don't.