Innovation and Speciation: aquatic mammals avoid bends (Evolution)

by dhw, Friday, December 11, 2020, 09:03 (1232 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.

dhw: 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…”

DAVID: Shapiro's modifications are only adaptations within species. The rest is pure interesting theory about a possible way/method to speciation.

He specifies “evolutionary novelty” You may disagree with him, but at least you can stop pretending that he does not mean what he says.

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

dhw: 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.

DAVID: Experimentation is your way of presenting a weak God. Not my image of God.

If he is incapable of directly designing what he wants, please give me a reason for his direct creation of all the life forms unconnected with what he wants. Ah, but you “have no idea why he uses that method”. How about experimentation, then? And just try to have a little more respect for inventors who experiment in order to produce what they are looking for.

“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.

dhw: 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.

DAVID: Because I don't view God as creating for His own self-interest.

This is not the most enlightening form of discussion: imagine yourself saying to Dawkins: “Why is my design argument not feasible?” Answer: “Because I have a different view.”

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.

dhw: 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.

DAVID: Accounted for by the process of evolution, which I fell God conducted.

Yes, all life forms are accounted for by the process of evolution. And you have your God designing every one of them, and…hallelujah! – you have no idea why your God would have chosen your method of designing millions of life forms that had no connection with humans (and their food supply) in order to design humans and their food supply.

Theoretical origin of life:
DAVID: The Shapiro who is my hero is Robert. See my bold. His book, Origins is from 1986 and he could easily see the problems in trying to understand the origin of life, about which we are obviously no closer to a reasonable theory. His book is one of the first I read to divorce myself from Darwin. I've not presented the lengthy descriptions of all the current attempts to make an advance, just the obvious frustrations of the reviewing author. This problem is why I think it is a major proof of the need for a designer God.

I don’t think you need to be a brilliant scientist to “see the problems in trying to understand the origin of life”. Nor do you have to be a brilliant philosopher to see the problems in trying to understand how the mystery of life’s origin can be solved by attributing it to an unknown inventor who never had an origin.