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

by dhw, Thursday, November 24, 2016, 13:21 (2920 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Well, we now agree on continuum. That is a change from your past comments which admonished me to remember Darwin didn't cover origins.

We have never disagreed on the continuum, since we have always agreed on common descent and I have always allowed for the possibility that “the initial intelligence may have come from God”. The admonishment comes when you try and emulate some ID-ers by dismissing Darwin en bloc instead of examining his hypotheses individually. One does not disprove common descent or natural selection by disproving random mutations and gradualism, or by demanding to know the origin of the evolutionary mechanism.

DAVID: Neat skip over: cells have their own intelligence somehow, or perhaps God did it. Either/or? Intelligence is gained by experience that is integrated, or by being taught. Does cellular DNA show any evidence of that ability beyond the minor epigenetic adaptations we see?

Already agreed a hundred times over. Nobody knows how speciation takes place, and so cellular intelligence is a HYPOTHESIS, extending the findings of scientists you happen to disagree with – just as your own hypothesis extends your imaginings of what your God might have had in mind when starting the whole shebang.

DAVID: No. Can't shake you from the tips of the picket fence.

I’m sitting on comfortable cushions of reason. However, when it comes to the question of God’s existence, I can’t win, because reason falls way short. Fence-sitting makes me wrong whatever the answer. You may be right and you may be wrong. Pascal’s wager?