Genome complexity: how humans correct errors; dhw confusion (Introduction)

by dhw, Wednesday, November 11, 2020, 10:54 (1263 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: This is a major difference between us. What I propose does not require one iota of foresight. My proposal, as you well know, is that every advance was made IN RESPONSE TO new requirements – not in anticipation of them. One simple example: you tell us your God turned pre-whale legs into fins before the pre-whale entered the water. To me it seems sheer common sense that fins would have resulted from adaptation to life in the water, once the pre-whale discovered that the marine environment was more favourable for its survival.

DAVID: 'Sheer common sense' offers no facts. Hippos lived in water since forever with no change!

dhw: Their survival shows that they did not need to change. How does that prove that your God changed legs to fins before pre-whales entered the water?

DAVID: It is my common sense interpretation.

So common sense tells you that 3.8 billion years ago your God would have preprogrammed the first cells not only to develop pre-whales (not to mention the brontosaurus and H. sapiens and millions of other life forms)) out of bacteria, but also to change pre-whale legs to fins when the time came for them to enter the water. Alternatively, he stepped in to perform an operation on a group of pre-whales, and then told them to enter the water. And yet amazingly, even today we see some life forms changing themselves IN RESPONSE to new conditions, and nobody has ever seen such changes take place BEFORE conditions have changed.

dhw: These changes are a deliberate, purposeful activity, and so it is perfectly feasible that the mechanism enabling them would also have enabled the major changes required for speciation. The borderline between adaptation and innovation is not clear anyway, as is evident from the whale example.

DAVID: The bold is an excellent analysis of our problem. The gap we have to cross is there is no physical evidence in the fossil record of small necessary adaptations leading to new species. So the big gaps create the unsolved problem.

Correct. And that is why we come up with our different theories. Then we test them to see if they make sense. I'm afraid the idea of pre-whales waking up one morning to find their legs have turned into fins elicits more of a giggle than a nod from me.

dhw: I am always surprised that you refuse to consider your God capable of designing a mechanism to produce all the billions of changes you make him preprogramme 3.8 billion years ago, or keep personally dabbling one by one.

DAVID: My reasoning is designing a mechanism to design for the future makes control one step away from the first designer, introducing possible errors.

According to you, your God’s design introduced errors anyway. We have a whole thread devoted to that subject, and the problem with your “control” theory is dealt with on that thread (which has broadened out again into a discussion of your whole theory of evolution). But you are right – my theory (theistic version) has God deliberately sacrificing control, and I offer a logical reason for his doing so under “Theodicy”.