Evolution and humans: our feet are special (Evolution)

by David Turell , Friday, October 12, 2018, 15:50 (2232 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: The innovations that MUSt appear from a desired new use require complex designs to achieve those changes. Only a designer mind fits the requirement for the necessary complex new designs.

dhw: My apologies in advance for all the repetitions, but they are the only way I can respond to your own repetition. Millions of designer minds also fit the requirement, just as we see with ants building whole cities and devising complex social institutions. Every bird, fish, animal (including ourselves) is a colony whose cells and cell communities cooperate to create the whole. (See my earlier post on “emergence”).

The whole is not created by cooperating cells. What a gross mistake in analysis! The whole is created by a wondrous DNA embryology system, a code unmatched by our feeble attempts at software coding which creates those cooperating cells in a homeostatic mechanism of life. You are looking at finished products, not how they are developed.

dhw: And when conditions change, those cell communities change. Not all. Some die. Some adapt. We know for a fact that the cell communities make minor changes to themselves. But it is possible that some adaptations may lead to major anatomical changes involving the whole body (e.g. for life on the ground or life in the water).

A giant leap of faith. The gap between minor adaptations of an existing species and the major gaps in the whale species as a example make this wishful thinking. Speciation requires major design changes not adaptations. Your point is pure Darwin once again.

dhw: We simply do not know the extent to which the cells can innovate.

Yes we do. Minor adaptations are all we ever see or can create in lab experiments of gene change research using CRISPR..

dhw: Nor, of course, do we know the source of the mechanisms that enable them to adapt. We are discussing evolution here, not the origin of life and its mechanisms for reproduction and variation. But if, for argument’s sake, we ignore atheistic chance and accept the existence of your designer God, here is the choice between two forms of theistic “magic”: 1) your God devises a 3.8-billion-year old computer programme for every single innovation, lifestyle and natural wonder that he does not personally create, using his powers of psychokinesis to rearrange the cell communities of the individual organisms he wishes to prepare for conditions which haven’t yet arisen. 2) Your God invents autonomous mechanisms which enable some organisms to drive evolution through their own adaptations and innovations, generally in response to changing conditions. So once again, please explain why you consider 2) to be more “magical” than 1).

You've ignored the possibilities for God's control: 1) a 4.1 byo basic program for total innovation control on auto pilot; 2) God watches, steps in to adjust (dabble); 3) God gives the organisms an inventive mechanism with specific guidelines, another form of auto pilot; 4) a Tony-like approach of constant creation of more and more complex organisms. All are equally God-possible, one not better than the others. You constantly insist on exact guesses, which underlies your agnostic bent for proof, when logic and then faith are necessary. You admit to the complexity of the life designs on exhibit, but then deny it requires a designing mind for such intricate results. At least you admit such a mind is possible as you balance on your uncomfortable fence.