Evolution, survival and adaptation (Evolution)

by David Turell , Wednesday, September 06, 2017, 15:11 (2633 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: I have said nothing illogical. God does what He wants.

So your always-in-control God’s method of fulfilling his primary purpose (the human brain) was to produce a bush. My human logic suggests that a primary purpose would normally be fulfilled as directly as possible, but although you can’t explain why he created all these different hominins, not to mention the whales and the rest of the bush, you happen to know that God’s logic is different from human logic, and so you are not prepared to consider the possibility that the bush itself might have been his primary purpose.

The amazing human brain is His obvious purpose. Bushiness is the unavoidable history.

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DAVID: Your answer again ignores the concept of foresight and planning to arrange for new advances or adaptations.

dhw: I am not ignoring it. I am disputing it. My whole hypothesis is based on intelligent organisms RESPONDING to new challenges and/or opportunities, instead of your God preprogramming them in advance or dabbling with them. The response comes AFTER the challenge/new opportunity.

You have again ignored the need for foresight and planning. How do intelligent organisms accomplish major adaptive changes without those mental processes? I'm not discussing the adaptive level of finch beaks. Of course the required change might be a challenge or opportunity. The impetus is not the point!

DAVID: Yes, they just do it. That is your answer. Unbelievable. Planning and foresight are never needed prior to arranging for complex changes. Totally illogical.

dhw: No, not prior to. There is nothing illogical in the argument that organisms ADAPT to changing conditions. It is a proven fact. The open question is how far they can take that process. I like your example of the whale, because I see each stage as a logical progression in the whale’s adaptation to life in the water. Not your God preprogramming or dabbling eight different changes (and it’s not clear anyway when he would actually have pushed the pre-whales into the water). What is unbelievable to you is that cell communities should be able to make major changes to themselves, although you accept minor changes. But nobody knows how the major changes took place. We only have different hypotheses: 1) random mutations; 2) a divine 3.8-billion-year-old computer programme plus divine dabbling; 3) cellular intelligence (origin unknown but possibly your God). And it takes faith to turn a hypothesis into a belief. I sometimes wonder if your hostility to (3) might be connected to your unwillingness to question your fixed belief in (2).

Cellular intelligence is the result of intelligent instructions in the DNA. 3) is a pipedream.