More miscellany Part One (Evolution)

by David Turell , Friday, August 16, 2024, 01:49 (97 days ago) @ dhw

“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.

Yep, unknown, and destroying Darwin's step by step proposals.

99.9% versus 0.1%

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.

dhw: 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.

Please admit without the 99.9% the 0.1% would not exist.

Insect gap

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

dhw: 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”.

What a contorted, confused notion to avoid outside information. All of ID theory is information must be supplied from outside the system. Your obvious lack of understanding how complex living biochemistry happened to be causes your attitude.

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