More miscellany Part One (Evolution)

by dhw, Thursday, August 15, 2024, 12:02 (98 days ago) @ David Turell

“De novo” (The Cambrian)

DAVID: The enormous gaps I've presented defy the bolded statement of Darwin you worship. It implies tiny steps for evolution to proceed. There are none!!!, unless you mean minor adaptations.

dhw: I have no idea how many steps were needed for a nerve to become sensitive to light, and for a light sensitive nerve to develop into the eyes we and our fellow creatures now have. Flatworm eyes were nothing like as complex as ours, which is why we can talk of gradual complexification. Maybe the flatworm eye was a big jump. You have of course dodged the question why, if God was capable of giving humans the autonomous ability to innovate, he could not have done the same with the cells that started the whole process.

DAVID: Is there evidence of your theory at play? The gaps are still there in plain sight.

I am not denying the gaps. There is no evidence that your God filled them, so of course there is no evidence that your God gave cells the ability to fill them. We only know of the gaps. What filled them is unknown.

99.9% versus 0.1%

DAVID: My view is from Raup. He treated all of evolution as one topic. 99.9% became extinct producing the 0.1% surviving. We are a part of the 0.1% and did came from the 0.1% and represent it in living now.

dhw: According to you, he did not say the 99.9% “produced” the 0.1% surviving! Why have you twisted what you wrote?

DAVID: I twisted nothing. You misinterpreted my first discussion of Raup.

Raup did not say that 99.9% “produced” the 0.1% of survivors:
DAVID (April 21st): His study was to explain why extinctions happened as a necessary part of evolution. He concluded 'bad luck'. Well-adapted species suddenly were unprepared for new circumstances. The losses cumulatively were 99.9% with 0.1% as survivors.

dhw: You have agreed that we are descended from Raup’s 0.1% of survivors. Only survivors can have descendants! See the example of the dinosaurs.

DAVID: We are contained in the 0.1%, not separate from it.

Of course! We and our contemporary species are descended from the 0.1% of Raup’s survivors. We are not descended from the 99.9% that went extinct without producing descendants. You agree. That should be the end of this discussion.

Insect gap

DAVID: The de novo appearance of insects requires design information as in the Cambrian and also in the plant bloom event, which Darwin acknowledged was an abrupt appearance.

dhw: I am not disputing the abruptness or the design theory (as per Shapiro). Please tell us what information had to come from outside the system.

DAVID: Look at the Cambrian!! what created the new designs requiring all sorts of new information.

dhw: Once more: I agree there is new information: conditions changed and organisms responded to the changes with innovations. Conditions and organisms are inside the system. Now please tell me what information HAD to come from outside the system.

DAVID: There were no insects. Suddenly there were insects. How? Designer information, as there is no other source.

We do not know the source of ANY innovations. The gaps are real. That does not mean there is an unknown, supernatural, sourceless eternal mind that suddenly produced them. You and I agree that the unlikeliest theory is chance mutations, since clearly there is a causal link between the arrival of new species and changes in environmental conditions. An alternative is that cells are intelligent enough to innovate when conditions allow for innovation. This intelligence may have been given to them by a power outside the “system” (i.e. your God), but the intelligence itself would still be within the system, supplying its own new “information”.

Plant controls

dhw: Over and over again, we see that all life forms are possessed of some form of intelligence which directs their actions in response to conditions. It’s hard to imagine chance as the problem solver, but it’s equally hard to imagine that your God would preprogramme or dabble every single organism’s response to every single condition and problem that might arise throughout the whole history of life. Some form of panpsychism, however, would seem to offer an explanation – that all living things are possessed of some form of intelligence. If this were to be the case, then of course the source would still remain an open question, some kind of designer God being a possible answer.

DAVID: Well, we agree.

dhw: Thank you. I’m delighted that you are now on the verge of accepting Shapiro’s theory as the most feasible (with the provision that your God provided the source of the intelligence).[…]

DAVID: I am not!!!

Continued in Part Two