Bacterial Intelligence and Evolution (General)

by dhw, Monday, May 06, 2019, 11:32 (2029 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: Perhaps you would tell us whether you regard a flipper as an innovation or as an adaptation of the pre-existing leg to enable it to function better in water.

DAVID: The flipper is an innovation since its function is different than weight bearing. The bony pattern is used in both, but the muscle functions and the controls by the brain will be different. Walking and paddling are totally different motions.

Of course the function and motions are different! Different functions and motions were required when the land-dweller took to the water. Hence the changes!

UCSB Science Line
scienceline.ucsb.edu/getkey.php?key=2536

QUOTE: "For whales and dolphins, their front legs turned into flippers. Their back legs became really tiny, so tiny that you can't even see them when you look at these animals, but they have hind legs still inside their bodies -- if you see a skeleton of a whale you can see it has tiny leg bones near its tail."

It doesn’t matter two hoots whether you call this adaptation or innovation (which is why I say we cannot draw a borderline between the two) – it is the process by which evolutionary changes occur in response to different environments, and such major changes lead to speciation.

DAVID: The difference requires planning as no tiny steps are seen in the gap between leg and flipper. Gaps absolutely require planning in my view and the fossil record is filled with gaps.

Yes, the fossil record is incomplete. In order to satisfy you, we would need a complete set of thousands of fossils recording every millimetre of front leg into flipper and big back leg into mini back leg. I’m afraid I still find RESPONSE to environmental requirements more likely than your God performing a one-off leg-into-flipper-and-shrink-the-back-leg operation on umpteen pre-whales in advance of sending them into the water to eat and be eaten until he performed all the operations necessary to produce H. sapiens.

DAVID: The known fact is that what we see in existing species are minor adaptations to the changing conditions as you describe. The gap of speciation requires planning for the future existence of the new species, which it can be assumed will involve new capabilities of action.

I keep agreeing that there is no proof that cellular intelligence can innovate, and that is why it is a hypothesis. The same applies to your hypothesis of a 3.8-billion-year-old computer programme for every undabbled innovation. And there really is no point in your repeating that speciation requires planning for the future, and making me repeat that I see evolution/speciation as a process of response and not planning. Neither of us has the authority or the evidence to state their opinion as if it were a fact.

dhw: Your suggestion is that your God provided the very first cells with an undiscovered 3.8-billion-year-old computer programme for every undabbled bacterial variation, evolutionary innovation, econiche, life form, lifestyle and natural wonder in the history of life, but you do not regard that as fanciful. My theistic alternative is that your God may have provided the first cells with the mechanisms to do their own designing in response to changing conditions. Why is that more fanciful than your proposal?

DAVID: The difference is I view God as very purposeful, and your fancy allows the organisms to evolve as they wish, under a God you envision as less purposeful.

Dealt with over and over again. If God’s purpose was to create a free-for-all (with the option of dabbling), then that is purposeful.

dhw: We both accept that evolution happened, but your concept of evolution is that it was all preprogrammed or dabbled (both of which are a form of direct creation). This in itself is not illogical. It only leaves you floundering when you insist that it was all preprogrammed or dabbled so that God could fulfil his one and only purpose of specially preprogramming/dabbling H. sapiens, leading to your exasperated cry: “Haven’t you realized by now, I have no idea why God chose to evolve humans over time”.

DAVID: I'll stick with my view of God as purposeful, and not wonder about His choice of method.
And later: There are no answers as to why God chose his method of creation. He had the right to chose, as you admit, so why question it? And the methods He chose to control evolution are the only ones that are reasonable to me.

Nothing to do with purposefulness. You cannot make sense of your hypothesis, which suggests that either your concept of God’s one and only purpose (to design H. sapiens) or of his method of achieving his purpose (designing billions of other life forms to eat or not one another until he designed H. sapiens), or both, may be flawed. Why you should consider an undiscovered 3.8-billion-year-old computer programme for all undabbled bacterial behaviour, innovations, life forms, lifestyles and natural wonders more “reasonable” than a (possibly God-given) mechanism for autonomous invention remains a mystery to me.