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

by dhw, Saturday, October 15, 2016, 13:40 (2750 days ago) @ David Turell

Dhw: 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.
DAVID: You are hypothesizing tiny steps. Fine. There is no evidence. My gaps are the evidence we have, and so I hypothesize from the only evidence we have. That is how jury trials work or logic should work.

I am not hypothesizing tiny steps. My hypothesis allows for all eventualities. You are right, jury trials and logic work according to the evidence, and if there is not enough evidence for a verdict beyond reasonable doubt, they leave the verdict open. There is no evidence whatsoever for your hypothesis that God pre-planned/dabbled every innovation and natural wonder. However, I’m delighted by your appeal to logic. Please see my closing comments.

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.
dhw: 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?
DAVID: Based on all the gaps, straight saltation.

Thank you: that means from fin to tikkileg to fully formed leg. I would deduce from this that before the discovery of tikki, you would have opted for saltation from fin to fully formed leg, and I’ll repeat my surprise that your God should have needed to organize even one transitional form. But this part of the discussion has been somewhat superseded by your second extremely illuminating post, which I’ll reply to separately.

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.
Dhw: 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: Yes. I think early bacterial life came with most abilities on board.

I must say I prefer “abilities” to programmes. The ability to solve countless problems (= intelligence) must indeed have been there from the start.

DAVID’s comment: Put in a new cheese making environment the bacteria adapt. Did God provide this ability?
dhw: 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.
DAVID: The ability to gene swap required no intelligence and is an automatic ability in my view. Example: Bacteria A receives a response from Bacteria B that differs from A's inherent abilities and asks for a cooperative swap and they do it. God built it in.

Why on earth would they need to talk to each other if God had already built it in? First A is aware that B has something he hasn’t got, then he and B have a chat about it, and the two of them reach agreement to do a swap. You could hardly have come up with a better illustration of intelligent, sentient, cognitive, cooperative, decision-making behaviour. Thank you.
The remainder of your post simply repeats your beliefs, apart from one delightful final comment:

dhw: 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?
DAVID: God used evolutionary processes to create humans. How is conjecture, but your question is entirely a possible way He worked. I don't believe God follows human logic in what He does.

But you seem to believe that he follows YOUR human logic. This sounds to me as if you accept the logicality of my arguments, realize that your own are illogical, but reckon God prefers your illogical way of thinking to mine.