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

by dhw, Tuesday, November 22, 2016, 12:08 (2922 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: 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).

DAVID: Excellent summary. If you reject chance (d) as I do, I do not see how you can implant intelligence into the first cells from their beginning (c), from which all other cells come. Were the first cells dumb but somehow learned from experience? That is trial and error and comes back to chance (d). If they are intelligent from the beginning of life, where did that intelligence come from? Intelligence always implies teaching or experience or both.

As usual, when we are discussing the different ways in which evolution might have worked, you scurry back to origins in order to skate over the problems of your own hypothesis. Here, as always, I have specified that the initial intelligence may have come from God. That is what I mean by “perhaps God-given”.

dhw: 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: Again, an excellent summary of your position on the picket fence, which means always looking for answers but finding none.

You can only find an answer if you shut your brain and take a leap of faith. You have always acknowledged this, and I have complete respect not only for your faith but also for the reasoning that has led to it. However, the reasoning inevitably contains huge gaps (otherwise you wouldn’t need faith), and it is these that fuel our discussions.

DAVID: You have expanded the concept of cellular intelligence beyond anything shown so far.
dhw: Agreed, but my point was that cellular intelligence would have to preclude your God’s designing every innovation and natural wonder.
DAVID: Of course, if 'simple' cells are intelligent.

Thank you.

DAVID: To be certain, we have shown that they are very complexly designed to function as they do. But that does not say they are innately intelligent.

No, it doesn’t. That is a hypothesis.

Dhw: 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.
DAVID: Your use of the phrase 'some scientists' clearly implies a valid difference of opinion exists. Shapiro wrote his book to try to change a tide of differing opinion. Darwinists don't like it and ID folks love it.

Of course a valid difference of opinion exists. If there was complete consensus, we wouldn’t have anything to discuss. You seize on any scientific opinions that support your own, and dismiss any that don’t. And you often go against the establishment. Good for you. So does Shapiro. Good for Shapiro. And apparently so do I. Good for me.

dhw: 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.
DAVID: The history of life includes the arrival of a fantastically unusual animal form with a giant brain, an extremely unreasonable result when judged by the stresses of the environment from which it came. Davies is incredulous that an organism evolved that can try to explain the universe. Do you feel incredulity?

Yes, I do. That doesn’t mean I have to believe that your God specially designed the weaverbird’s nest and every other natural wonder and innovation, or that he did so for the sake of humans.