Logic and evolution: doubting Darwin; (Introduction)

by David Turell , Wednesday, February 05, 2020, 21:03 (1541 days ago) @ dhw

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

dhw: 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.

More magical Darwin thought. Chance. No. Magical cells, yes.

dhw: 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).

Again your distorted view of my beliefs. God knew, as you well recognize, the tree of life has to be here before us in order to evolve us, but also to provide the energy sources for life to continue.

dhw: 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!

Again, humanizing guesswork.

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.

dhw: 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.

You don't explain the gaps by assuming cell committees can design for the future, based on the bacterial ability to edit DNA for necessary responses, as the same species.

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.

dhw: 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).

My same answer. We have no evidence of your cellular intelligence in advanced multicellular organisms, and the bacterial ability to edit DNA, never changes them to a new species. That ability is at a level they need for live-alone survival, and never produces any aspect of a new species. I introduced you to Shapiro and you swallow him, book, line and sinker in a frantic attempt to diminish God or abolish Him. I know you will complain you make theistic efforts. You always do in an anemic humanized way.