Convergence: an animal outside standard descent (Introduction)

by dhw, Wednesday, August 02, 2017, 14:11 (2463 days ago) @ David Turell

QUOTES: "Moroz now counts nine to 12 independent evolutionary origins of the nervous system […]

And your God no doubt needed to design all of them in order to fulfil his one purpose of producing the human brain.

QUOTE: "Simon Conway Morris, a palaeontologist at the University of Cambridge, has stressed the importance of evolutionary convergence: that evolution tends to arrive at the same solutions over and over again, even in distant branches of the animal tree, and even when the proteins or genes used to build a similar structure are not themselves related.”

All so that your God could produce the human brain?

QUOTE: "Because the ctenophore invented brains and muscles using a set of proteins and genes so different from any other animal that has ever been studied, it provides a unique opportunity to explore some enormous questions: how divergent can nervous systems be? Do we truly understand how life senses its surroundings and behaves?"

I would suggest we don’t. But it seems likely to me that all these life forms work out their own means of coping with the environment, and there is no reason at all why intelligent beings should not come up with similar solutions to similar problems.

DAVID’s comment: Convergence is a strong indicator there is a design mechanism in the evolutionary process. There may have been one or more initial starts to life but the concept of common descent needs to recognize, the chain of relationship is not so common.

I agree that there is a design mechanism, and I suggest that the design mechanism is what has enabled life to diversify into all its many forms, as all the different organisms use their (perhaps God-given) intelligence in order to cope with or exploit their environments rather than to serve the single purpose of producing the human brain. And yes, maybe life did start more than once. Darwin, in theist mode, says so himself: “There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one.” (My bold)