More Denton: Reply to David (Introduction)

by dhw, Thursday, July 23, 2015, 12:56 (3202 days ago) @ David Turell
edited by dhw, Thursday, July 23, 2015, 13:09

DAVID: The contrast between the pre-Cambrian and the Cambrian continues to become greater. This is really the main gap to discuss. There is no good reason foundso far for the giant leap in complexity.-Agreed. One theory is that there was a major change in the environment which provided a vast increase in opportunities for cell communities to use their autonomous, inventive intelligence. Another theory is that there is a supernatural power which preprogrammed every change 3.8 billion years ago, or which suddenly started monkeying around with the different cell communities.
 
DAVID: Shotgun is a good word. In your method cells make blind attempts at improvements by changes, and seeing what survives in natural competition. The giant changes in the Cambrian defy your theory to work.-My response to your last post argued that the attempts were anything but blind. Just as the mechanism for adaptation is precisely targeted, so too would the intelligent cell community use prevailing conditions to work out new ways of exploiting them. Humans do the same (and also fail as well as succeed). Meanwhile, you continue to gloss over the extreme unlikelihood of your 3.8 billion-year-old computer programme for all the changes in life's long history (see above).-dhw: The Cambrian illustrates why gradualism doesn't work. Exquisite planning applies to all organs, organisms, and Nature's Wonders. However, your assumption seems to be that only God and humans are capable of exquisite planning. 
DAVID: Pipe dream. Frankly, you don't understand biologic complexity at the basic physiologic levels.
dhw: Since your only alternative is divine preprogramming and/or dabbling, you will have to direct the same criticism at any biologist who doesn't believe in God.
-DAVID: Fair enough. They are blind to reason, in my view.-I'm glad you realize that your view entails informing professional biologists that they don't understand biologic complexity at the basic physiologic levels. I'm sorry you don't realize that this reflects rather badly on your attitude towards people who disagree with you.-DAVID: A huge 'perhaps'. You have jumped on one very specialized set of cells and assume every cell can do this. They can't because they are not built that way.-dhw: It is not an assumption but a hypothesis, and it is not applied to every cell. In any cell community, as in any other community you can think of, some cells will organize and others will be organized.-DAVID: A very hopeful hypothesis. We know of no mechanism as to how they organize and cooperate which each other, except biochemical reactions and methylation of DNA for minor response adaptations.-
All forms of communication and physical action, including our own, involve some kind of material process, but that does not explain the decision-making that precedes the communication and action. You simply assume that human organization and cooperation are the result of autonomous intelligence (the source of which is unknown), whereas cellular organization and cooperation are done automatically as a result of divine preprogramming. “Large organisms chauvinism”.-dhw: I am not disputing that evolution creates more complexity, or that humans are in certain respects more complex than other organisms.
DAVID: "In certain respects?" We are vastly more complex in physical and mental abilities. -The physical ability of other organisms to see, hear, withstand the heat, withstand the cold, go without food and water, swim, fly, run, communicate over long distances etc. vastly exceeds our own....But I agree that our mental abilities vastly exceed theirs.-dhw: However, the main thrust of my comment was that there is a vast difference between humans as the most complex organisms and humans as God's purpose for creating the universe. I am delighted to see you at last abandoning the second claim and focusing all your attention on the first.-DAVID: I don't see the difference. If the humans are so much more complex, why not view them as the pinnacle of evolution?-You are assuming that evolution has finished, but even if it has, what do you mean by the “pinnacle"? We have the most complex brain. So our brain is the most complex brain of evolution. The dog has the most complex nose (I think). So the dog has the most complex nose of evolution. When you learn to flap your arms and fly three thousand miles non-stop in five days, you may even claim to have reached the evolutionary peak of long-distance flying. So what is the criterion for the pinnacle? But to return to “the main thrust of my comment” which you are still dodging, and to use your pinnacle metaphor quite literally, the fact that Everest is the highest mountain does not mean that your God's purpose in creating the universe was to produce Everest.