Evolution and humans: our feet are special (Evolution)

by David Turell , Saturday, October 13, 2018, 15:30 (2231 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: 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: I am saying that they are developed through the cooperation of cells. You’re talking as if DNA were somehow separate from the cells! You can hardly deny that your whole body consists of cooperating communities of cells. How do you think your preprogramming or dabbling God changes organisms (through innovations) if he doesn’t do it through changing the structures of the cell communities and the way in which they cooperate?

So you hop to the theistic side of your fence. Of course cells are designed to cooperate.

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

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

dhw: So you think research is now over, do you? Although amazingly you expect research one day to discover the divine, now 4.1-billion-year old (it suddenly got older) computer programme that led to speciation.

What are you smoking? Research is not over and shows changes as genes are manipulated.

dhw: …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).

DAVID: 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.

dhw: I haven’t ignored them. You’ve just quoted them (now in bold) and repeated them. And the alternative to constant creation by a computer programme, and/or dabbling, and/or an inventive mechanism which is automatic and not autonomous, is constant creation by an inventive mechanism which is not automatic but is autonomous.

DAVID: All are equally God-possible, one not better than the others.

dhw: But you have completely ignored my own hypothesis, and have not explained why you think yours are less “magical” than mine – the question I asked you on Thursday.

Not ignored: all possible thru God.

DAVID: You constantly insist on exact guesses, which underlies your agnostic bent for proof, when logic and then faith are necessary.

dhw: And there was you, moaning that belief in the logic of an autonomous inventive mechanism required a giant leap of faith! I do not insist on anything. I propose a hypothesis to explain how evolution works and which seems to me considerably more logical than your own, which has your God preprogramming or dabbling billions of life forms, lifestyles and natural wonders extant and extinct just because he wants minds to “try and understand how God did it”.

All you have said parenthetically is "God is illogical". Cells do not have the design capacity you wish on them.

DAVID: 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.

dhw: Yes, I admit it is possible, so you can hardly say I deny it, but I offer you an alternative (still theistic) way in which that mind might have engineered the complexity of life so that evolution could proceed. Once more, why is my way more “magical” than your way? (See also the next post)

Cell committees have never been shown to have that degree of design capacity as a designing mind does have as we know by looking at human design endeavors. The experts you quote for cell intelligence are simply describing how the cells run their lives with seeming intelligence. None of them ever discusses designing cells. Your magical thinking is your way of avoiding as acceptance of theism.