Evolution and humans: our feet are special (Evolution)

by dhw, Sunday, October 14, 2018, 11:08 (2230 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: The whole is not created by cooperating cells. What a gross mistake in analysis! […] 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?

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

The (theistic) choice here is between your God preprogramming/dabbling the cooperation that enabled them to evolve, or your God giving them the wherewithal to organize their own cooperation, so please don’t tell me the whole is not created by cooperating cells.

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.

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

You claimed that we know the extent to which cells can innovate because research only shows minor adaptations. My point is that research is not over. So maybe new research will reveal more than we know now.

DAVID: All [the hypotheses] 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.

DAVID: Not ignored: all possible thru God.

Thank you. Now that you agree to the possibility of autonomous cellular intelligence as a theistic hypothesis, please tell me why my hypothesis is more “magical” than yours.

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”.

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

A moment ago you agreed that all the hypotheses are “possible thru God”, which must include mine. Please explain why your God’s hypothetical creation of an autonomous mechanism for innovation would make him illogical.

DAVID: 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.

My thinking explicitly states over and over again that the hypothesis allows for God as the inventor. I also explicitly state that it is a hypothesis precisely because the design capacity is hypothetical, just as your computer programme, your dabbling and your God are hypothetical. Nobody knows whether God exists, and nobody knows what mechanism is responsible for the innovations that cause speciation. So once again, why do you insist that my hypothesis is more “magical” than your hypotheses?