How children pick up a language: new review of Wolfe (Humans)

by David Turell , Wednesday, November 09, 2016, 14:42 (2934 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: You are proposing a magical kind of intelligence in your cell communities which is God-like. News species require very involved mental planning. Hard to avoid the need for intense planning for a new species, isn't it. Your argument sounds like a struggle to escape God.

dhw: I offer an alternative. You agree that organisms have the ability to adapt and that some are intelligent (though not humanly intelligent). Some scientists tell us that microorganisms are also intelligent.

Invoking the word 'intelligent' doesn't support any portion of your argument. The degree of intelligence shown by Shapiro is limited to the ability to recode their DNA to alter their adaptations to variable stress, no more. Epigenetics has been explored in larger animals like Reznick's guppies showing once again adaptability, not speciation. Let's explore this article:

https://aeon.co/essays/on-epigenetics-we-need-both-darwin-s-and-lamarck-s-theories?utm_...

"One problem with Darwin’s theory is that, while species do evolve more adaptive traits (called phenotypes by biologists), the rate of random DNA sequence mutation turns out to be too slow to explain many of the changes observed. Scientists, well-aware of the issue, have proposed a variety of genetic mechanisms to compensate: genetic drift, in which small groups of individuals undergo dramatic genetic change; or epistasis, in which one set of genes suppress another, to name just two.

"Yet even with such mechanisms in play, genetic mutation rates for complex organisms such as humans are dramatically lower than the frequency of change for a host of traits, from adjustments in metabolism to resistance to disease. The rapid emergence of trait variety is difficult to explain just through classic genetics and neo-Darwinian theory. To quote the prominent evolutionary biologist Jonathan B L Bard, who was paraphrasing T S Eliot: ‘Between the phenotype and genotype falls the shadow.’" (my bold)

Comment: the whole article describes epigenetic research and is worth reading. But it never answers the question of how speciation works. No one knows!

dhw: None of this means that saltations have to take place in large numbers of organisms all at the same time, as opposed to one or just a few individuals, and there is no issue between us on the subject of gaps. A saltation is a jump, and we agree that Darwin was wrong when he said that nature does not jump.

DAVID: Refuted in Wistar.

dhw: Please give me a reference to Wistar refuting the idea that speciation occurred through a few individuals who passed on their innovations to future generations. (In any case, what possible evidence could you and they have?)

Wistar is entirely a mathematical look at generational time scales and mutation rates and concludes Darwin style evolution is impossible. Never refuted! Note the quote above.

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DAVID: All of our conclusions can only be speculations. Relationship involves His consciousness and our consciousness.

dhw: Obviously you can’t have a relationship without consciousness meeting consciousness. Why does that make your view of an emotionless God more likely than any other?

It doesn't. I treat God as emotionless, because it is not fair for me to try to imagine his emotions

dhw: In a nutshell, I do not believe for one second that God specially designed the weaverbird’s nest, let alone specially designed it in order to balance nature so that organisms could be fed in order for humans to appear.

My only answer is lots of believers think exactly that. The profusion of life forms needs an explanation which you do not offer. God MUST have a reason. Not weirdness for the sake of weirdness. Balance makes perfect sense.