Innovation; Just for dhw (Introduction)

by dhw, Tuesday, December 22, 2015, 17:36 (3058 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: I'll stick to anthropocentrism, thank you. My return to origin of life is to insist upon the presence of information, implanted from the beginning that presents the basis and blueprint for life and evolution. Of course it allows for dabbling, if that had to exist.-If the basis and blueprint for evolution was an autonomous intelligence, it could explain the higgledy-piggledy (or helter-skelter) history of life and evolution, whereas your implanted blueprint for every single innovation, lifestyle and natural wonder (other than those that were dabbled) clashes irreconcilably with your anthropocentrism.
 
DAVID: Our view still differs. The Cambrian started 37 phyla. This provides for balance of nature, about which you seem to deny the importance of a food source for everyone.
dhw: Who is “everyone”? The balance of Nature has constantly changed, and no doubt one of the causes/results (it's a vicious circle) of that shifting balance is that there is NOT enough food for “everyone”. How does that mean that the helter-skelter bush, including the 99% of extinct species, was designed to produce or feed humans?
DAVID: You didn't think about 37 phyla. Why so many? Could humans have arrived if here were less? Actually there were many more that started and died away as you point out. -Still wearing my theist hat, I ask the same question. Why so many, and what was the point of all those that died out? You have now acknowledged the possibility that your God had to experiment in order to get to humans. Two explanations: 1) the explosion of phyla was not in aid of humans at all: they worked out their own evolution. Humans were an afterthought. 2) He wanted to create humans, didn't have a clue how to do it, and blundered through all those species which he then had to discard.-DAVID: As for balance of nature, sure it has changed through the centuries, but today humans are doing more to destroy it. In the past the changes drove innovation, but as I look at the bush of hominins, I still don't see a change in the balances of nature that required humans to appear. The balance supports us now, but we are in danger of losing it unless we accept the Bible's instruction that we have dominion over it. I'm simply reasoning backward from these considerations. Actually all you do is poke holes, but I like that because it refines my thinking. [...] I adjust all the time, and you help. It is as if you are the natural selection for my conjectures.-A mixed bag of reflections here. 1) The human threat to the balance of Nature is irrelevant to our current discussion, but well worth discussing. 2) Humans were not required to appear: already covered umpteen times. Nothing beyond bacteria was “required” to appear. Or do you really believe the weaverbird's nest, the parasitic jellyfish etc. were designed to produce and/or feed humans? 
3) Yes, I poke holes. That is a problem because it is a negative approach, and I am wrong one way or another. But which way? These discussions are invaluable to me, though. The vast range of your own knowledge, coupled with that of BBella, Tony, Matt, George and many others down through the years, has immeasurably deepened my own awareness of the mysteries of life and the universe, even if I am as far as ever from solving them! Romansh has hit the nail on the head in his post under “Golden Ratio”: “I like the analogy of our knowledge being a little bit like cosmic inflation. While our "knowledge" increases in leaps and bounds; our ignorance, the boundary between what we know and don't know also increases.” The perfect summing up.