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

by dhw, Friday, October 14, 2016, 14:13 (2743 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID (under “molecules”): That they conclude cells are intelligent is not proof of intelligence. It is only opinion and I have mine.

Agreed at last. It is all a matter of opinion, and therefore your usual blanket dismissal of my hypothesis is based entirely on opinion and not on any scientific fact.

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

Tikki is new evidence of transitional forms. My hypothesis allows for all eventualities: tiny steps (improvements, as above, not changes of species), transitional forms and saltations leading to new species.

dhw: Your own theory requires changes from fins to tikkilegs to fully formed legs.

DAVID: 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.

Yes, my hypothesis depends on cellular intelligence (minds) to plan complex forms. You keep harping on about tiny steps and transitions and gaps, but as usual, you avoid my direct question: Do you believe your God preprogrammed/dabbled more transitional forms or a straight saltation?

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

So please stop pretending it’s a simple matter of choosing between left and right. “Set them up” is yet another euphemism for preprogrammed.

DAVID: Look at this article about gene swapping to survive:

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2108972-cheese-making-led-to-gene-swapping-orgy-of...

DAVID’s comment: Put in a new cheese making environment the bacteria adapt. Did God provide this ability?

Well yes, he may have provided the first cells with a programme to pass on for bacterial cheese-making-environment adaptation (or stepped in when those pesky humans invented cheese). Alternatively, he may have given bacteria the intelligence to work out ways of gene-swapping that would enable them to adapt to all sort of environments.

dhw: Human beings have also mastered many environments. Do we do it automatically by walking left or right?
DAVID: No, no, it was our mental capacities, I agree.

Of course you do. But you cannot conceive of the possibility that your God might have given mental capacities to bacteria to do the same. Or can you? Under “molecules” you wrote, concerning the apparently intelligent behaviour of bacteria, “It may look that way to you but to me it can all be automatic.” I accepted “can be” – I am not dogmatic in my defence of my hypothesis. “Can be”, however, does allow for intelligence.

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.
DAVID: 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?

Neat return to dogmatism (no “can be” here) – statement of fact: they automatically function, i.e. God preprogrammed them all right from the start to cover every single environmental condition for the next 3.7 billion years. The theistic alternative: isn’t God’s gift of intelligence, enabling organisms to control 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.
DAVID: The bold above is what I believe. I know you don't.

I neither believe nor disbelieve. I am an agnostic. Meanwhile, do you seriously believe God stepped in to give false vipers camouflage in order to preserve the balance of nature to provide food to keep life going so that humans could appear?