Logic and evolution: doubting Darwin; (Introduction)

by dhw, Wednesday, February 05, 2020, 12:57 (1752 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: […] how does an animal have the active lifestyle requiring a specialize backbone if that backbone dose not already exist?

dhw: Of course the backbone exists. The question they are asking is how a simple backbone evolves into a more complex one – which is the same question we ask about the whole of evolution: how did (relatively) simple cellular structures evolve into whales and eagles and elephants and humans? They talk of an evolutionary trigger, and animal behaviour. So how about the trigger being changes in the environmental conditions, and how about new lifestyles (behaviour) resulting in the intelligent cell communities restructuring the spine and all its related bits and pieces? Just like the whale again: you want your God magically switching legs into flippers before they enter the water; I propose that they enter the water first, and then the cells get to work on their own restructuring to facilitate the new form of behaviour.

DAVID: My attitude remains: you can't do it until the equipment is available.

Agreed. The illiterate women, the taxi drivers, the musicians make the effort to acquire new skills and in doing do, they change certain sections of the brain. Now they have the equipment. Pre-whales try to swim, and thereby change the legs into flippers. It is the effort to meet requirements that creates the changes which provide the equipment. Every organ must have had its origin in the restructuring of cell communities. You say your God dabbled them or programmed them all 3.8 billion years ago, thereby personally designing every single piece of equipment throughout life’s history (despite wanting only to design H. sapiens). I suggest he may have designed one piece of equipment. At least the beauty of this theory is that it raises none of the questions you find impossible to answer. It is solely a matter of whether cells do or do not have the required degree of intelligence, but even you can hardly doubt that your God would be capable of giving it to them!

DAVID: Trying to do the new activity does not cause the backbone to suddenly appear, especially because we have no evidence of gradualism which that thought implies.

dhw: They are not saying the backbone suddenly appeared! They are talking specifically of “new demands on the backbone” – precisely the proposal I keep putting to you, which you keep reversing with your proposal that God changes the backbone before there are new demands.

DAVID: They do not know how or when the newer backbone appeared but certainly after a gap from the older form. They are Darwinian like you and still think the modifications slowly crept up, and ignoring Gould's gaps, which troubled him all his life. They never seem to trouble you, but they sure tell me a different very logical story.

I don’t know why you continue to ignore my explanation of how the gaps are bridged, namely by intelligent beings called cells/cell communities. The fact that you don’t believe it is no excuse for you pretending that I ignore the gaps or believe in total gradualism.

DAVID: […] No question, form first, use second. Our advanced brain invented those new activities. Darwinists are backward theorists. ID proponents are not.

dhw: There is nothing backward here, but you simply refuse to register the answers offered before. How did the brain reach its current capacity: jumps and stasis…new jumps and new stasis…maximum capacity reached. Once the capacity was reached, new ideas required a new form of adjustment: complexification. Of course the brain was in place so many thousands of years ago, and from then on new ideas and activities were implemented by complexification (which was so efficient that shrinkage occurred)within the existing capacity of the brain. These activities also used the existing spine. How is this “backward” and why do you think an ID proponent would reject it? Do ID-ers believe their God is incapable of devising a mechanism that would give organisms the ability to think for themselves?

DAVID: God's dhw mechanism would never occur to them. You just can't seem to 'register' how backward you are viewing the whole process. My tenet is simple as stated above. You can't do a new thing (any activity) until you have the appropriate equipment as we all see in this life of ours.

You just can’t seem to ‘register’ that intelligence can restructure the existing equipment to enable it to tackle new tasks. You say it gets restructured by a 3.8 billion-year-old computer programme for every restructuring, or God pops in to do the restructuring himself in advance of any need. I propose that he gave cells the means to do what you say only he can do. You just can’t seem to ‘register’ that your theory demands the same process as mine! But you have the restructuring taking place before it is needed (God looks into his crystal ball?), whereas I have it taking place in response to a need (intelligent cellular response).