More miscellany Parts One & Two (Evolution)

by David Turell , Saturday, August 17, 2024, 23:26 (30 days ago) @ dhw

“De novo” (The Cambrian)

dhw: 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.

DAVID: The eye and brain are not good examples. Cambrian eyes are really de novo as are their brains.

dhw: Even that is questionable, but I'm referring to the gradual development of eyes and brains from the first “primitive” forms to those of today.

Yikes!!! Show me one early eye form in the Ediacaran? Well!

99.9% versus 0.1%

dhw: 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%, ...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.

DAVID: What does the bold mean? Then two parts of the sentence conflict.

dhw: You can’t have a percentage of anything without the existence of something else that makes up the 100! If more species had survived, the percentages would have been different, and if God had created us “de novo” (see "Cambrian"), we would have been the 100%. The 99.9% were NOT essential for the purpose you impose on your God, which is why your theory of evolution makes him ridiculously inefficient.

The Raup numbers are overall statistics for all of evolution lumped together. Stop over-interpreting them.

Insect gap

DAVID: […] 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.

dhw: 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”.

Yes, I have attitude. Shapiro's theory is pure conjecture based on what bacteria can do, which system is not carried on now.

Shapiro redux: slight praise for ID

QUOTE: "The ID argument has a valid point with regard to the explanatory limits of neo-Darwinism, still widely regarded as the only legitimate scientific explanation of evolution. ID falls down by assuming (as do mainstream evolutionists) that genome change occurs from outside the boundaries of life itself.”

dhw: An excellent summary. It’s a pity ID confines design to God when Shapiro has offered an alternative that breaks open the limits of neo-Darwinism with a rational explanation of evolution which could be theistic or atheistic.

Thought you might enjoy.

Plant controls (now “cellular intelligence”)

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.

dhw: For some reason, you omitted this important point.

DAVID: I find it a fine description of your view.

dhw: And you seem to have no reason for rejecting it.

It is only your view, not mine.