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

by dhw, Monday, November 21, 2016, 12:35 (2706 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Of course I can believe in evolution and God's control. Have you forgotten our discussions about pre-planning or dabbling?
dhw: Hey, hey, stop! Please read the sentences in bold. “Control” is not separate creation! Separate creation is the exact opposite of common descent. You wrote: “there is no evidence that a series of innovations leads to new species.” Let me repeat: How else can new species arise? Even if God preprogrammes or dabbles the innovations, they must take place in existing organisms unless you believe in separate creation. Please clarify: do you or do you not think that innovations take place within existing organisms, and innovations lead to new species?

DAVID: We are having semantic problems, or at least I am. By 'innovations', I meant adaptive modifications, epigenetic changes orchestrated by the organisms themselves. But that cannot reach the level of speciation by itself. New species are too complexly different for that to work. Of course, as God uses evolution as His mechanism for creation. He uses the original organismal form as the basis to create the newer form/species. I actually view this as stepwise creation. Of course this is dabbling. My other thought is preplanning for the series of creation and finally an onboard guided inventive mechanism. All this comes from a judgment that God runs evolution to reach a final human form.

You certainly are having semantic problems if you take innovation to be synonymous with adaptation. However, let’s make the best of a bad job and do a recap. By innovation in the context of evolutionary development we mean something new, i.e. that did not exist before. New species must entail innovation(s) of some kind. If you believe in common descent, each innovation must take place in an existing organism. This must be true, whether your God has a) preprogrammed the innovation(s) or b) dabbled the innovation(s), or c) cell communities have the intelligence (perhaps God-given) to design their own innovation(s), or d) chance created the innovation(s). There is no proof for any of these hypotheses. You do not believe in cellular intelligence, and so you reject c), and both of us reject d).

If you believe in common descent, humans have also evolved from earlier organisms. Theoretically, their evolution can have resulted from any of these processes, but d) is out for both of us. I do not believe the higgledy-piggledy history of life denotes that all innovations were geared to the production of humans, or that the first cells were programmed with every single "non-dabbled" innovation and natural wonder for the last 3.8 billion years. However, if God exists, I can believe in the occasional dabble (perhaps in the case of human consciousness). I therefore reject a), and am inclined to favour c) with a possible dash of b). (But please remember that rejection of one thing does not mean acceptance of another - that is the essence of agnosticism.)

DAVID: If God dabbles, it precludes nothing.
dhw: If God dabbled every innovation and every natural wonder, cellular intelligence would have no part to play in any innovations or natural wonders. There would be no point in your God giving cells the intelligence to do their own designing if he did it all for them! Therefore my hypothetical cellular intelligence would preclude God having to do all the designing.
DAVID: You have expanded the concept of cellular intelligence beyond anything shown so far.

Agreed, but my point was that cellular intelligence would have to preclude your God’s designing every innovation and natural wonder.

DAVID: Of course you can claim anything in hypothesis, but you should try and base your proposals on some reasonable evidence to start with, and in my view you haven't.

What constitutes “reasonable” is of course subjective, but I am not claiming anything. I am suggesting a possible solution to the mystery of speciation, based on what we know about life’s history and on what some scientists tell us about the behaviour of cells. In my subjective view, your own hypothesis of first cells preprogrammed with every “non-dabbled” innovation and natural wonder in the history of life - as epitomized by the weaverbird's nest - all geared to the “final” production of humans, is unreasonable.