Evolution took a long time (Introduction)

by David Turell , Wednesday, January 04, 2017, 00:25 (2881 days ago) @ dhw
edited by David Turell, Wednesday, January 04, 2017, 00:34

Not only do we understand only a small bit of the many layers of the genome, but we also understand only a small bit of how consciousness/intelligence works. At least it is possible to test the intelligence of organisms.

For animals with a brain, intelligence testing is straight forward. With single celled animals, one tests intelligent planning or intelligence, either or.

dhw: Please give us an example of an inventive change which you consider organisms are capable of organizing autonomously.

DAVID: I can't. It is only a proposition of what might exist. We do recognize epigenetic adaptations, but they are minor, as we both agree. There is no evidence how complex speciation occurs, as in the whale series.

dhw: Your hypothesis and mine are only “propositions of what might exist”, but we can at least try to fit these propositions to the history of evolution as we know it.

In trying to fit in what we see in evolution we need to recognize the size of the gaps between the various stages of, for example, the series of changes from dinosaur to bird:

https://www.quantamagazine.org/20150602-dinosaurs-to-birds/

It is worth studying. Recognizing the degree of complexity leads to recognizing the need for a sophisticated mind to plan the changes. The development of the feather alone is enough for me to reach that conclusion. It has be invented before flight develops. What use are feathers for the non-flying dinosaur, before he ability to fly develops? Not much if anything. The development of the feather is also highly complex when studied. Bones had to become lighter, metabolism revved up. The whole series of changes strongly suggests planning and teleology.

DAVID: The complex uses of tools by crows are not comparable to the knots making nests that hang off trees.

dhw: They are proof of intelligence and of the ability to use their own natural attributes to perform complex tasks. Building a nest with knots is comparable to beavers’ dams and ants’ cities.

You may well be correct here. God can bed seen as helping them also.

DAVID: I do not believe these critters have the mental capacity to produce their own saltations.

dhw: But you do believe that the very first cells contained programmes for every single saltation, and so for reasons you yourself cannot fathom, God personally designed all these wonders, extinct and extant, plus all bacterial adaptations throughout life’s history, in order to produce humans.

No, I've included the issue of dabbling. Not a perfect program from the beginning, but God stepping in to direct the changes.

DAVID: Humans are obviously the pinnacle of evolutionary creation. Why not my scenario?

dhw: Because my scenario also allows for divine dabbling and for humans to be the pinnacle, but – in contrast to your own scenario - explains the higgledy-piggledy bush. As I see it, you are forced into this disjointed pre-planning scenario because for some reason you cannot stand the thought that your God might not have had everything worked out in advance or might even have deliberately created a world that could produce the unpredictable.

Your scenario requires organismal genetic intelligence they obviously don't have, but assumed to possibly exist. The complexity of life obviously requires meticulous planning to create life and then have it advance with increasing complexity.