Evolution and humans: Neanderthal lungs larger (Evolution)

by dhw, Sunday, November 11, 2018, 09:35 (2203 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: I don't understand your comment about Shapiro. I find my answer on Nov. 9th. We disagree about how to interpret him, and he deserves interpretation from the standpoint of biochemistry some of which is shown by my entry of yesterday about research into the automatic physical chemistry of the cell. The workings of the single cell are showing what I expected the research to show before it was accomplished as in my book from 2004.

The exchange ended on 8 November. You had challenged me to name a scientist who agreed with my conclusions. I did:
QUOTE: "The capacity of living organisms to alter their own heredity is undeniable. Our current ideas about evolution have to incorporate this basic fact of life."
QUOTE: “Shapiro integrates advances in symbiogenesis, epigenetics, and saltationism into a unified approach that views evolutionary change as an active cell process, regulated epigenetically and capable of making rapid large changes by horizontal DNA transfer, inter-specific hybridization, whole genome doubling, symbiogenesis, or massive genome restructuring.”

DAVID: I've carefully read all of this a long time ago, based on his bacterial studies, and have integrated it into my thinking and arguments.

dhw: If you have carefully read that living organisms have the capacity to alter their own heredity, that evolutionary change is an active cell process, and that rejection of cellular intelligence is “large organisms chauvinism”, then you have not integrated it into your thinking and arguments but have categorically rejected it.

You are, of course, free to reject the concept of cellular intelligence – even though you agree that it has a 50/50 chance of being correct – and to reject its possible link to the advancement of evolution. But you certainly don’t integrate either hypothesis into your illogical argument that your God’s purpose was to specially design H. sapiens, and so he specially designed every innovation, lifestyle and natural wonder in the history of evolution.

DAVID: How does life get from single cells to humans? What we accept is common descent over a very long time. And the evidence is single celled eventually became humans. And my conclusion is that it could not have happened by chance. There is no obvious reason to have advanced beyond bacteria or beyond apes. So I have logically concluded there is a drive for complexity, which I have ascribed to God. The only step in this series of thoughts is I have added God, which requires faith.

There is nothing illogical about any of this. We have long since agreed that chance is an unlikely explanation of evolution, and we have long since agreed that your God may be the initiator of the process. But you have carefully left out the huge step which is so illogical that you have to claim your God’s logic is different from ours: namely (apologies for the repetition), that his purpose was TO CREATE HUMANS, but he specially designed 50,000 different spider webs plus billions of other life forms, lifestyles and natural wonders extant and extinct in order to provide energy for life – whether human or non-human.

DAVID: As for designs in life, there are many examples.

Indeed there are billions. Your belief (apologies for the repetition) appears to be that your God designed every single one, although his purpose was to design H. sapiens.

DAVID: I have presented that cannot be explained by chance stepwise development. How do you know what God decided to design and what He did not design? I come the point of view that evolution was guided and designed and you don't.

As regards humans, you have just agreed that Lucy was a transitional form, so please distinguish between “chance” and stepwise. Transitions are steps. Organisms which adapt themselves to new environments have to make changes which are not by chance. You have your God (apologies for the repetition) changing the organisms before they confront new conditions, whereas I suggest (theistic version) that he provided them with the mechanism to change IN RESPONSE to new conditions. Neither of us “knows” what your God decided to design, but you insist (apologies for the repetition) that your illogical hypothesis – God’s purpose was to create humans, and he specially designed 50,000 spider webs – is correct, and you dismiss mine: God gave spiders the intelligence to design their own webs.