More miscellany Parts One & Two (Evolution)

by dhw, Friday, August 16, 2024, 12:44 (97 days ago) @ David Turell

“De novo” (The Cambrian)

dhw: 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.

dhw: 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.

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

We have long since agreed that he was wrong to insist that nature never “jumps”, although there is no doubt that much of evolution was a gradual process, as organs and organisms complexified. The eye and the brain are good examples.

99.9% versus 0.1%

dhw: 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.

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

Of course mathematically you can’t have 0.1% of survivors without the 99.9% of non-survivors, but that does not mean that the 99.9% were the ancestors of the 0.1%, or that your God had to design the irrelevant 99.9% in order to produce us plus our contemporaries! If your God exists and is all-powerful, he could have designed us and our contemporaries “de novo” without any ancestors. But evolution is a fact, and so if God exists, maybe he had a different purpose and/or method than the imperfect, inefficient, schizophrenic one you impose on him.

Insect gap

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

dhw: […] An alternative [to “outside” information] 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”.

DAVID: 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.

ID has become synonymous with the notion of God the designer, and so of course he is outside the system he created. But whether he exists or not, if intelligent cells do their own designing, then the designing will have been done from inside the system. Your prejudice against Shapiro’s theory and your adherence to your own schizophrenic beliefs “cause 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. […] 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!!!

dhw: All life forms, animal and plant, are composed of cells. If you agree that they all have some form of intelligence, then you are agreeing that cells have some form of intelligence! That is Shapiro’s theory. […]

DAVID: The ability to make minor adaptations may imply some minor intelligence, but not the ability to speciate!

dhw: Whether that intelligence is powerful enough IN SOME SPECIES to allow for further speciation is a moot point, but that is why I say you are on the verge of accepting Shapiro’s theory. Acknowledgement of intelligence is a very big step in that direction. So too is acknowledgement that there are different degrees of intelligence. Some cell communities cannot go beyond devising means of survival. Comparatively few will be able to innovate. We can see an analogy in humans: not many of us have creative, innovative intelligence. But it only takes a few to create whole new industries/species.

For some reason, you omitted this important point.

The origin of a nervous system

QUOTE: "It seems that animals were able to cobble together a functioning nervous system very early in their evolution simply because most of the necessary proteins were already there.'"

dhw: If cell communities (animals) were able to cobble a nervous system together very early in evolution, it suggests that in due course they would have been able to “cobble together” all the innovations that have led to current species.

DAVID: More wishful thinking.

You simply cannot understand that although you yourself “first choose a God I wish to believe in”, my own agnostic approach is to examine all possible explanations. I do not have wishes. It is your wishes that prejudice you against Shapiro and that lead you into the maze of contradictions that you yourself label “schizophrenic”.

Symbiotic controls (back to “theodicy”) and Natural killer cells

Dealt with on the “evolution” thread.