Innovation and Speciation:baleen whale feeding (Evolution)

by dhw, Monday, June 26, 2017, 13:20 (2706 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: Might not responsive divine dabbling be the correct interpretation, with no need for advanced planning?
DAVID: Yes responsive dabbling is a possible approach.
dhw: Thank you. This means it is possible that the major changes which result in speciation can occur in response to environmental change and do not require “advanced planning”.
DAVID: Total misinterpretation. Dabbling requires almost as much planning as a totally new species.

First you agree that there's no need for advanced planning, and RESPONSIVE DABBLING is possible, and next day you disagree! Dabbling is your alternative to preprogramming as your God’s means of producing new species! It would mean personally fiddling with each targeted individual’s insides at one particular moment, as opposed to your 3.8-billion-year-old computer programme, which magically switches itself on at the right time in each targeted individual. With your astonishing knowledge of God’s apparently now limited mental powers, you are saying he is incapable of producing saltations in response to environmental changes, and needs to work them all out in advance.

dhw: But since nobody knows how speciation (broad sense) occurred, I suggest that it is a hypothesis that should be taken seriously and cannot be rejected on the grounds that speciation required “advanced planning”.
DAVID: Advanced planning is always required to integrate new changes, as shown in the whale series. The issue you have raised is how advanced (?), 3.8 billion years ago or more recently as a dabble, since I don't know and offered those two possibilities.

The issue I have raised is whether advanced planning is necessary at all. If by “dabble” you do not mean direct intervention to personally create the innovation at one particular time (e.g. when the environment changes), then please explain what you do mean.

DAVID: This book review covers the patterns of animals and plants in nature suggesting 3.8 billion years is correct:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-nature-scales-up-1498239216
QUOTE: Unsurprisingly, evolution keeps nudging organisms toward those properties, which again are similar for every species, because they depend on physical laws that are independent of biology. (DAVID's bold)
DAVID’s comment: Note the bold and the fractal patterns, all given by God to guide the process of evolution. And in bold God knows logarithms!

Seems to me like confirmation of common descent. Can’t see any mention of God.

xxx

DAVID: Can you mention other sources of consciousness? Nagel says unless we start considering teleology, our understandings will not advance.
dhw: Your question is another diversion from the issue of cellular intelligence, which you have unfairly ridiculed by distorting the concept. But it is a vitally important question in its own right, and I can only answer it by repeating that we not know the source of ANY level of consciousness.
DAVID: That is why I choose God as the ultimate consciousness. Logical faith again.

You have left out my comment that I do not see any logic in claiming that the source of consciousness is consciousness.