autonomy v. automaticity (Evolution)

by dhw, Tuesday, March 06, 2018, 15:34 (2452 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Again forgetting that imbalance in nature has led to extinctions. Everyone has to eat. Nature's balance supplies that need. Nothing more to understand.

dhw: It’s not an imbalance, it’s a different balance. For the survivor it’s balanced, and for the non-survivor it’s imbalanced. You seem to think there is only one correct balance by which all other balances throughout the history of evolution must be judged! Yes, everyone has to eat, and if they can’t, the balance changes. Nothing more to understand, so why do you keep bringing it up? It’s only relevant to ecology, as all your examples make clear, and has nothing whatsoever to do with your hypothesis that God designed the weaverbird’s nest to keep life going until he could produce the brain of Homo sapiens.

DAVID: The weaverbird makes the point you miss. Balance is attained by the vast diversity we see in the bush of life. The bush is a requirement for evolution.

And you continue to miss the point that the balance constantly changes, and the vast diversity and the changing environment are the CAUSES of the ever changing balance, and the bush is the RESULT of evolution, i.e. of diversity and changing environments, and this would be true even if there was no such thing as a weaverbird and its nest or a human and its brain. Please leave “balance of nature” to discussions on ecology.

dhw: Yes, we are very clever, but that doesn’t mean the weaverbird can’t also be clever in its own way, and it certainly doesn’t mean God had to teach the weaverbird to tie complicated knots so that life could go on until he produced the human brain.
DAVID: There is no explanation as to why that brain appeared except for rapid human mutation zones demonstrated in our genome. Not by chance. reeks of design.

And according to you there is no explanation as to how the weaverbird could tie such complicated knots unless your God did it. But I agree – neither nest nor brain is the result of chance. Both “reek” of design. So here’s an alternative theory to chance. Their respective cell communities (using their possibly God-given intelligence and inventiveness) cooperated to produce these designs.

dhw: And “there could be a degree of group think not yet uncovered”. Of course there are automatic actions, but how did they originate, and what happens when the automatic processes are disrupted? Must all innovations, lifestyles, natural wonders and problem-solving be divinely preprogrammed or dabbled, or do single cells (e.g. bacteria)/cell communities (“group think”) work things out for themselves? I like the quotes from Gucci and (much though he may regret it) my friend David Turell.

DAVID: Offering sweet comments are appreciated but will not stop me from explaining how God designs.

It’s not a sweet comment. You have said there could be a degree of “group think”, which supports the whole hypothesis of cellular intelligence which you have always been so desperate to deny. The smile is because you have acknowledged that this may have been “how God designs”.