Innovation and Speciation: aquatic mammals avoid bends (Evolution)

by dhw, Thursday, December 10, 2020, 12:12 (1443 days ago) @ David Turell

Shapiro’s theory of “natural genetic engineering”
dhw: … please stop pretending that Shapiro does not propose cellular intelligence as the driving force of evolutionary innovation, and that his theory applies only to bacteria.

DAVID: 'Cellular intelligence' is your distortion of his theory, which I don't accept. My statement above about Shapiro is how I view his contribution.

This is getting sillier and sillier. Yet again, as quoted a few days ago from your book: SHAPIRO: "Living cells and organisms are cognitive (sentient) entities that act and interact purposefully to ensure survival, growth and proliferation. They possess sensory, communication, information-processing and decision-making capabilities." And for good measure: “evolutionary novelty arises from the production of new cell and multicellular structures as a result of cellular self-modification…”

Aquatic mammals
dhw: There is no proof for any of my theories or of yours, including the existence of God. I asked why your proposal that your God’s abilities were limited EXCLUDED experimentation.

DAVID: Theoretically your version of a weaker God might need to experiment. Your theories always seem to weaken God's abilities.

You can hardly weaken them more than by suggesting that “God’s ability to directly create humans was limited. That involves two considerations: 1) God had some personal limitation.” (The second was the silly argument about food supplies being created for humans millions of years before humans arrived.) I really can’t see why the possibility of personal limitation excludes the possibility that in order to get what he wanted, he had to experiment.

“Fine tuning of water” and “new extremophiles”
DAVID: I see God as purely creating, and reviewing what He did. We cannot know His reaction to it.

Strange. A couple of days ago you were sure he was interested in his creations, and you were sure “He likes what He creates, and that He is satisfied in His results as the inventor.” And all I’m suggesting is that if he’s interested in his creations, likes them, and finds satisfaction in them, then maybe that’s what he created them for. And all I ask is why you don’t regard this suggestion as feasible.

Sea turtles
dhw: I can't help wondering how his design of a turtle navigation system was “part of the goal of evolving [= directly designing] humans".

DAVID: Part of ecosystems. […]

dhw: All organisms are and were part of present and past ecosystems for food supply. How does that make all of them “part of the goal of evolving humans”?

DAVID: Surprise!! Food supply.

A quick google suggests that the modern sea turtle goes back about 100 million years, so I suppose you could argue that this was part of the 1% of your God’s direct designs to evolve humans and their food supply (never eaten one myself, but luckily I've survived so far). That just leaves 99% to be accounted for.