Back to David's theory of evolution (Evolution)

by David Turell @, Friday, July 10, 2020, 15:54 (1348 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: It’s not my brain sitting in Miss Bee, and she is not an observational scientist! She simply noticed that a fortnight after she bit a leaf, the plant flowered. So she told her buddies, they tried it, and it worked! You seem to believe that in order to perform the trick, bees should think like humans, can’t do so, and therefore God had to do the thinking for them!

TONY: Except that we know the signaling and reception pathways in plants, bees, other insects, and even some birds had to be arise together or there would have been no reason for any of them to develop those pathways because there would have been no benefit.

dhw: A similar problem to that of the chicken and the egg, perhaps. But you are assuming that the bees and the plants could not have survived without one another. This particular phenomenon is confined to just one species of bee. Why can’t an organism survive by other means, but when it encounters something new, change its behaviour accordingly?

My question has not yet been answered.

TONY: Lastly, it [is] possible to have both a hard coded program and a set of rules that are not written directly in the program, but referenced by it. In programming this would be known a Rule Engine. What comprises that rule engine is a bit unknown, but given the fact that nature CLEARLY follows rules and laws, that 'rule engine' as it were, is definitely something.

dhw: I am out of my comfort zone with your computer analogies, but may I suggest that in Nature all organisms follow the “rule” that the survival of their species depends on energy supply and reproduction? That would be the programme. And every different means of acquiring energy would be related to that programme. Once Miss Bee has bitten the leaf and seen the consequences, and further bites confirm the benefits, leaf-biting becomes a new “rule”. Too simple?

DAVID: dhw always tries to simplify the complexity that requires design. That is why his animals and cells think so well for his reasons.

DAVID: Finally, back to my point. It takes a repeated observation and a mental analysis, the latter being your assumption as to how brainy bees can be. Bees may have waggle dances, but that doesn't prove God didn't help with both instincts.

dhw: We are not talking about the complexity that requires design. You assume that animals and insects are unable to observe, to learn from experience, and to communicate without your God either preprogramming every single strategy, lifestyle and “natural wonder” 3.8 billion years ago, or stepping in to give lessons in leaf-biting, dancing, camouflage, migration, nest-building (my favourite weaverbird) etc., even though his one and only purpose was to design H. sapiens and his food supply. I'm afraid I find all this a bit hard to swallow.

My dog has learned a great deal by observation. It is hard to formally train Poodles. But nothing he has learned required by the mental correlation of two separated events in time as connected. You just don't see the point. The bitten leaves are totally unrelated in time. It takes multiple observations over time, then wondering are these related, and then realizing they are, and deciding to purposely repeat biting in action to confirm it.


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