Logic and evolution: doubting Darwin; (Introduction)

by dhw, Friday, September 06, 2019, 10:43 (1691 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: You have ignored this paragraph in the essay: "The human brain and the power of speech put humans way beyond the boundaries of Darwin’s own three critical criteria for natural selection, which; (i) may expand an animal’s power only to a point where it has survival advantage — and no further; (ii) cannot produce changes that are “injurious” to the animal; and (iii) cannot produce a “specially developed organ” that is useless to an animal at the time it develops. If a Neanderthal brain three times the size of any primate’s and a unique capacity for speech do not constitute “specially developed organs,” what does?"

dhw: So what do you mean by Darwin’s “principal theories”?

DAVID: Obviously covered with the three points made in the quote.

I would call this nit-picking. (i) There can be no question that the human brain has given us huge survival advantages. The “further” benefits – art, philosophy etc. – are not necessary for survival. If Darwin actually wrote “and no further”, then out it goes. (ii) Were the changes to the brain injurious to the animal (us)? No. (iii) Was the brain useless at the time it developed? Clearly not, since it helped the species to survive, even though – like most other species in the course of time – some forms of human went extinct. I would suggest that the discredited “principal theory” is random mutations as the prime cause of innovation, and we agreed that long ago.

dhw: ... the illogicality of your theory that your God’s one and only purpose in designing ALL of them was to enable life to survive until he started designing the ONLY thing he wanted to design!

DAVID: God chose to evolve. You humanize God's thinking and don't accept that point.

Your usual mantras. (See “Unanswered questions”).

DAVID: Again, you are ignoring the need for design by a mind.

dhw: I am proposing that the cells do the designing because, as many scientists now believe, cells are intelligent organisms. But I am an agnostic, and acknowledge the possibility that your God may be the designer of the intelligent cell. Why do you think he is incapable of such a design?

DAVID: Because i believe God designed cell instructions that make them look intelligent as they react.

So you agree that he is capable of designing intelligent cells, but your fixed belief is that 3.8 billion years ago he preprogrammed every single reaction which has led to every single innovation, lifestyle and natural wonder in the history of life. So be it.

DAVID: Your cells have no neurological abilities.

dhw: There are all kinds of cells, including neurons. In multicellular organisms they combine to form communities, and these communities – whether 1) divinely preprogrammed or 2) divinely dabbled, or 3) acting autonomously, are the producers of innovations. You simply reject the third hypothesis, on the grounds that we don’t actually “know” if it is true. Same problem, then, with 1) and 2), but you have a fixed belief in at least one of them.

DAVID: Note the bold. You KNOW they innovate what?

If you believe in common descent, then you believe that speciation is the result of major changes in the cell communities of which all multicellular organisms are made. (Or do you deny that multicellular organisms are made of cell communities?) The three hypotheses above are attempts to explain HOW these communities change: (i) and (ii) say they have been divinely dabbled with or preprogrammed, and (iii) says they act autonomously. We do not know which of these three hypotheses is correct, but since you have a fixed belief in (i) and (ii), that would suggest that you know (iii) is wrong.

dhw: […] here is an article that might open your eyes to the fact that single cells do not need human brains to think:
www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-10/uoc--bdb101915.php
"Biologists at UC San Diego have discovered that bacteria--often viewed as lowly, solitary creatures--are actually quite sophisticated in their social interactions and communicate with one another through similar electrical signaling mechanisms as neurons in the human brain."

DAVID: This is well-known. Electric signals don't prove they are thinking.

Not much point in communicating if you don’t know what to communicate and the receiver doesn’t know what to do with the information anyway.

DAVID: I can't accept design by cell committee, your theory to avoid God.

dhw: For the thousandth time, it does NOT avoid God, because God may have been the designer of the intelligent cell. What you cannot accept is the increasing amount of evidence that cells are intelligent. That does not prove that they are capable of evolutionary innovation, but it is a major step along the way, since we already know that they are capable of adaptation.

DAVID: Once again, all we know is they act as if intelligent, and it all can be in the intelligent information they use, which they were given.

So (a) please stop pretending that the theory is a way of avoiding God, and (b) if their intelligent behaviour “can be” the result of 3.8-billion-year-old instructions, then it “can be” the result of autonomous thinking, but you have a fixed belief in only one of the “can be’s” and prefer to discount the views of scientists who have spent a lifetime studying cell behaviour. Ah well, once more: so be it!