Innovation and Speciation:baleen whale feeding (Evolution)

by dhw, Friday, June 23, 2017, 14:17 (2709 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: […] By dabbling I mean small changes,
dhw: This is a big surprise. […] In the past you have told us your only dilemma has been whether evolutionary innovations were preprogrammed 3.8 billion years ago, or dabbled. Now you are telling us that all the major innovations and the brain jumps were preprogrammed.
DAVID: No big surprise. My analysis is always continuing and I've told you in the past that your goading questions make me rethink my theories. The big gaps in body plan and processes require meticulous advanced planning […] It is conceivable that it was all pre-programmed 3.8 billion years ago. But your response raises the issue of the level of dabbling. […] We are just discussing labelling what God does, nothing very important.

I’m glad our discussions are as helpful to you as they are to me in our quest to explain the inexplicable. One of the problems I have with your theories is that they fail to connect all the things we are trying to explain. For instance, if speciation was preprogrammed 3.8 billion years ago, your God must already have known about the environmental changes: increased oxygen; land to water; forests to plains. How “conceivable” is it that the very first cells contained programmes for every species extant and extinct, plus every environmental change relevant to the process of speciation? (It would be an odd plan that did not include the conditions necessary for the plan to work.) Plus all the different lifestyles and natural wonders which you also consider to be beyond the powers of the respective organisms. Or were these dabbled? And we mustn’t forget that God’s one and only purpose was to create homo sapiens, which leaves you floundering to explain why he preprogrammed eight or so stages of whale.

As for dabbling, I don’t agree that it is not important. The implication of what you have written above is that your God is not capable of reaching into existing organisms and restructuring them in order to take advantage of new conditions. Now apparently all the big changes had to be planned in advance. Why are you suddenly limiting his powers (again)?

DAVID: As for your idea that speciation can occur without planning, what it implies is that it occurs by simple itty-bitty hunt and peck steps, which does not fit the gap evidence in all the fossil record. I view it as wishful thinking, trying to get rid of God as a driving external force.

Your 3.8-billion-year of computer programme is an INTERNAL driving force, implanted by your God. The autonomous inventive intelligence of cell communities is also an INTERNAL driving force which may have been implanted by your God. It does not imply itty-bitty hunt and peck. Adaptation in the face of existential threats has to be rapid, and my hypothesis suggests an extension (on a far greater scale) of that same mechanism. Of course, this is a “guess”, just like your computer programme, and there is no evidence for either guess. But I do not regard yours as more “conceivable” than mine, especially since mine fills so many of the gaps that yours leaves.

dhw: We are discussing God’s motives and methods, and free will is an example of God’s willingness to cede control.
DAVID: Mental states are not physical states. Our free will is a one time mental concession to allow us free use of the gift of our giant brain. God maintains physical control of evolutionary processes for all physical changes. It is the only example where He has allowed freedom, and doesn't fit as a glaring exception.

Your authorative declaration that “God maintains physical control” is the premise I am questioning! Free will may not be an “exception”. It may be an extension of a pattern in which God creates a system that allows organisms themselves to devise the vast variety of forms, lifestyles and wonders we see throughout the ever changing history of life. What evidence do you have for your dogmatic statement? You cannot even make up your mind from one day to the next about the extent to which your God controls the environment. “Physical control” of evolution is another guess, and it has no more authority than mine.