More miscellany Parts One & Two (Evolution)

by dhw, Sunday, September 15, 2024, 11:35 (4 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: Consciousness requires design, but a supreme consciousness does not require design. Please explain the logic.

DAVID: Where is your logic of a necessary first cause?

dhw: For the umpteenth time, the choice is between an eternal, sourceless conscious mind and virtually infinite combinations of matter and energy which eventually chance to produce the first primitive forms of life and intelligence. Close your eyes and jump one way or the other, or admit that we just don’t know. Meanwhile, please explain your logic, as requested in bold.

DAVID: The logic is design is required, thus a designing mind is required.

And the logic is that if a designing mind is required to explain the existence of designing minds, then the designing mind must have been designed by a designing mind. Back we go to the choice between two “first causes”, as above.

Kamikaze termites

DAVID: You don't understand that ecosystems support all life?

dhw: All life is supported by ecosystems, but that does not mean that all ecosystems from the year dot, up to and including current ecosystems, have been designed exclusively to support humans and our food!

DAVID: Why not with God is charge?

If you really believe that every ecosystem containing every form of life for the last 3.8 billion years was specially designed to provide us humans with our food, then so be it. No wonder you ridicule your God’s handling of evolution as imperfect, messy, cumbersome and inefficient. I’d say those terms were pretty mild in the light of this latest theory.

Two Neanderthal types

dhw: Sensational new fossils are being discovered almost monthly, throwing doubt on established theories. Who knows what revolutionary discoveries might be made in, say, the next thousand years?

DAVID: It won't close existing gaps.

dhw: How do you know?

DAVID: Gaps are well established even if you wish they weren't. Remember Gould's quote.

dhw: Of course there will always be gaps! Who expects to find fossils covering every stage of every species for the last 3.8 billion years? I don’t wish anything. I simply look for convincing explanations of the history we know. Which Gould quote? I find his theory of punctuated equilibrium absolutely convincing.

DAVID: Gould quote paraphrased: hidden secret in paleontology is tips of branches without continuity.

The tip of a branch would be its end. “Without continuity” sounds like Raup’s 99.9% extinction. Why don’t you just stick to the point: there will always be gaps.

Recent new modifications

DAVID: This is support for Shapiro's theory that DNA can be edited. An evolutionary example of adaptation, but not evidence of speciation, which is still a totally unknown process.

dhw: Once again,I must thank you for your integrity in presenting POSSIBLE evidence for a theory of which you disapprove. There are many crystal clear examples of adaptation, but the distinction between adaptation and innovation is sometimes blurred. Pre-whales and pre-humans might be taken as prime examples. Although we agree that speciation is still an unknown process, the very fact that DNA can be edited is a major plus for Shapiro’s theory: if cells are capable of editing their own DNA, where and why do you draw a limit?

DAVID: No evidence cells produce speciation.

It’s a theory based on their established ability to edit their own DNA. There is no evidence that an unknown, eternal mind programmed or dabbled every innovation, lifestyle, strategy etc. In your case, it’s a theory based on the definite type of God you want: i.e. an omnipotent, omniscient, purposeful God whose only purpose was to design us plus food, and who therefore inexplicably and inefficiently designed every species, though he then had to cull 99.9% of them because they were irrelevant to his purpose.

Dinosaurs to birds

Dealt with on the “evolution” thread.