Explaining natural wonders: bacterial intelligence (Animals)

by David Turell , Wednesday, May 24, 2017, 00:50 (2529 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: You are merely repeating what I have said. They are all confronted with the same problem, some solve it and some don’t. Of course they are variable – that is my point. But instead of some of them unknowingly turning on your God’s 3.8-billion-year-old computer programme for countering antiobiotic number 150 while the others miss out, I suggest some of them work out how to do it because they are cleverer than the others.

You are ignoring my point that the alternate pathways already exist. It is just a matter of the lucky ones switching them on.

DAVID: You are back to Darwin hoping the missing tiny steps would be found. Gould famously said they didn't exist and invented punctuated equilibrium to explain it, but it doesn't.

dhw: That was not my point, and you know it. You keep saying that evidence for my explanation has not been found, and I keep pointing out that ALL these explanations are HYPOTHESES (i.e. there is no proof), as is patently obvious from the continuation of my post:
If we could find God’s 3.8-billion-year-old software for every single stage of speciation from bacteria to humans, we wouldn’t need to hypothesize. If God came down from heaven to earth and explained everything to us, we wouldn’t need to hypothesize. Unfortunately for poor old Dawkins and Co, there are no “ifs” that can prove God doesn’t exist, so at least that’s one argument you can’t lose!

My point in referring to tiny steps is my repeated idea that only chance (tiny steps) or design fit the evolution story because of all the large gaps we have not filled in our fossil discoveries, and no matter how hard we look the gaps don't ever decease. The Cambrian precursor gap as the most significant of all.

dhw:...as I have already explained umpteen times before, environmental change offers opportunity, and the drive for improvement (which you call complexity) is what leads to speciation.

Yes, opportunity. We each recognize the complexification, but we disagree on the cause. I'm with God.

DAVID: Yes, you hypothesize, but I prefer to follow what is known and demonstrated. Saltations in biology require major complex mutational changes and prior planning. If you look back in today's comments, you keep hoping for tiny steps. So did Darwin.

dhw: I do not keep hoping for tiny steps – you edited my post to change its meaning – and I have repeatedly accepted saltations. Yes, they require major changes, but that does not mean they must be planned beforehand (they may be a RESPONSE to environmental change).

You have not mentioned my entry from yesterday about intrinsic hominin spine changes from 3.3 million years ago which are an obvious preparation for fully upright posture: Monday, May 22, 2017, 20:43. These changes are certainly a speciation change, which offers no immediate environmental advantage, since the change is only a step in a process, but a major complex phenotypic change, allowing eventual bipedalism. The spinal advances allowed humans to change environment, while apes stayed in their accustomed range Speciation first, environment second. But I agree environment can drive adaptations of existing species.

dhw; It is not "known" and has not been "demonstrated" anywhere at any time by anyone that God exists, let alone that God planned every innovation, lifestyle and natural wonder in the history of evolution, let alone that he did so for the sole purpose of producing humans.

It requires analysis and the recognition of the need for design. Then faith can appear.