Darwin & Wallace (Evolution)

by dhw, Friday, October 02, 2015, 12:19 (3119 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: But “did not need” is not an argument for divine guidance or, above all, your anthropocentrism. Only adaptation, not innovation, was needed if organisms were to survive environmental change. And so if the chain runs from bacteria to humans, the drive to complexity - I used the term “improvement” - explains every single additional attribute that birds, insects, fish and animals (including humans) have developed throughout the history of life. Not one of them was “needed”. And not one of Nature's Wonders was “needed”. So one can hardly single out the upright posture and big brain of humans as if somehow they were an exception just because they were not “needed”.-DAVID: I interpret the process of natural selection as a response to environmental pressures, i.e., challenges which appear that may adversely affect survival of a given type of organism. The organism responds with adaptations, mostly likely epigenetic. Fine so far, but with this approach we still don't see a way to new inventive speciation, only improvement of an existing species. The 'drive to complexity' is apparent when looking at evolution's history. I combine these two thoughts: the 'drive' somehow creates new species at a time when the environment does not seem to require the improvement in complexity. Bacteria are one prime example, humans another as arrivals against need.-If you reread my post, you will see that you have simply expanded on my point that “only adaptation, not innovation, was needed if organisms were to survive environmental change”. However, here you give humans as a “prime example”, whereas elsewhere you have used the “need” argument to suggest that humans are the exception and indeed the purpose. My point, once more, is that EVERY innovation, whether related to humans or not, was “against need”, and so that argument offers no justification for your anthropocentrism.-DAVID: Advances require new genetic information. Information cannot be generated by chance or by materialistic naturalism. Therefore, guided evolution becomes my choice.-Our dispute has always been over the nature of the guidance. See below.-dhw: In so far as your acceptance of design relates to the inbuilt drive - which might be equated with an autonomous, inventive intelligence - then our hypotheses coincide.-DAVID: You may not think so, but an 'autonomous inventive intelligence' begs for a source. Not by chance, not out of thin air. Once again, origin of life and evolution are intimately connected. They cannot be separated. First life had to have the built in drive to complexity, or please explain it.-Over and over again I have conceded the possibility that the autonomous inventive intelligence was your God's invention. I am an agnostic. The discussion between us has always concerned how evolution itself has progressed, and I have pitted this form of “guidance” against your “guiding”, 3.8-billion-year computer programme and/or dabbling as an explanation for the whole higgledy-piggledy history of extinctions and what you call the “odd twigs”, which would include every non-human innovation, lifestyle, nest and natural wonder.
 
dhw: But once we get on to the divine design of every single innovation, natural wonder and individual lifestyle, all for the purpose of producing and/or feeding humans, my scepticism exceeds even that towards Darwin's theory of random mutations.

DAVID: Skeptical or not, a drive to complexity may create a bunch of odd twigs on the bush of life, but still achieve the goal of humans; perhaps the drive did not need the direct intervention of God's dabbling to produce the oddities. The thought gives me a different answer about the dabbling issue. Thank you for the stimulation.
-This is where you have to decide whether the weaverbird's nest, the monarch's lifestyle, the wasp's egg-laying required your God's preprogramming/dabbling or not. “Guidance” won't do. If we follow your hypothesis, God did it and it was part of his plan for humans; if you follow mine, the prototype weaverbird/monarch/wasp did it for their own purposes, using their (possibly God-given) intelligence. And if you opt for the latter, you open the door to all the innovative complexities being the product of that same (possibly God-given) intelligence.
 
The thanks are reciprocated. These discussions have arisen out of the marvellous array of scientific articles that you provide us with, and long may the exchanges continue!