dhw: I know you don't buy it. You think it was all separately created (by dabbling) or planned 3.7 billion years ago in a programme inserted into the first living cells......-I have also said that life is very inventive and I have allowed for a semi-autonomous IM.
> 
> DAVID: I'll stick with God.
> 
> dhw: I have offered you God as the possible inventor of the mechanism. You mean you'll stick with your hugely hopeful, awfully iffy 3.7-billion-year computer programme and an occasional dabble.-No, I've accepted the possibility of a semi-autonomous IM. Based on our current knowledge of epigenetics, I don't think we can know how much complexity can be developed by an IM.

dhw:Innovation in general, though, does not have to be the result of need - it can also happen because of new opportunities offered by a change in the environment. Once more, the purpose is survival and/or self-improvement. We don't know why the apes descended, but if fins could be changed to legs, I don't see why a larynx couldn't be made to drop.-Very hopeful and iffy suggestion. I don't buy it. Fins to legs required enormous changes. The larynx dropped but is not present on fossils, since it is soft tissue. The only fossil evidence is from the arched palate starting to appear at 1.5 million years ago. Speech possibly appearing at 100,000 years ago. I look at this as good planning and not fitting your hoped for 3rd way of producing evolution.-> 
> dhw: Cell communities coordinate purposefully in astonishing ways, as you have demonstrated repeatedly on your Nature's Wonders thread..... These explanations do not sound more reasonable to me than God giving organisms the wherewithal to do their own inventing.-I'll stick with God.

dhw: ...it is patently absurd for anyone to claim they know how long it normally takes for apes to evolve into humans. 
> DAVID: The Wistar Institute's presentations have never been refuted. Judgments about human mutation rates are published from time to time as relatively accurate assessments.
> 
> dhw: How can you refute a hypothesis about or assess the accuracy of judgements on events without precedent or points of comparison? Besides, once again, we are not dealing with random mutations.-Purposeful mutations mean teleology. Are you joining me?-> dhw: Once more, nobody knows how innovations are created, but it is not unreasonable to suppose that a mechanism capable of changing an organism's structure for adaptation might also be able to innovate, given the right conditions.-Epigenetics research tell us that organisms do adapt and subsequent generations carry those adaptations. As I've noted before this means changes are environmentally driven by changing environmental challenges. This is still a chance driven evolution, in which the odds for human consciousness seem insurmountable.- 
> DAVID: It must be a very intelligent IM to have that much foresight in planning for language and speech. Sorry, but this reeks of design.[/i]
> 
> dhw: Yes, it does, and these are brilliant posts for which many thanks. .... You constantly talk of planning, and that is not how I see the progress of evolution. Just as with adaptation, I visualize the changes coming about IN RESPONSE to new conditions, not in preparation for them. Either there is a need for change, or conditions encourage change for the sake of improvement. And so in this particular case, the changes in the larynx, epiglottis etc. would have come about because with their ever expanding intelligence and acquisition of information, humans needed a more sophisticated method of communicating. In other words, the changes were not planned in advance of that need - they arose from it. -You keep skipping over the knowledge we have about the stages of development. Tell me about the conditions that told the larynx to drop well before speech developed. Speech also required a brain to learn speech. Your claim seems to be all of this happened because the environment demanded it?!-> dhw: In anticipation of your usual objections, I'd better repeat for the umpteenth time that nobody knows how innovations take place. You offer preprogramming from Year One, divine dabbling, or a list of multi-choice questions; I offer a mechanism which is known to be capable of adaptation and may therefore also be capable of invention.-"May therefore", without recognizing the coordination of stages of development which reek of purpose is very unreasonable to me.


> dhw: Why have you suddenly brought in the Darwin chance mutation method? Over and over again we have agreed to discount chance mutations - although even then it is patently absurd for anyone to claim they know how long it normally takes for apes to evolve into humans. “One of the best”? Another judgement that cannot be confirmed.-The Wistar Institute's presentations have never been refuted. Judgments about human mutation rates are published from time to time as relatively accurate assessments.-> dhw: In our own discussions, I have suggested that it happened through organisms having an inventive mechanism (possibly deigned by your God) that was able to exploit new conditions in order to bring about advantageous changes. The only clue we have as to the existence of such a mechanism is the fact that we know organisms can adapt to new conditions, which itself involves making changes to their own structure.-But not necessarily advancements, only responses to situational problems.-
> dhw;in any case we are not dealing with random mutations. -I know we both can accept that statement. The problem is the complexity in life that developed appears to be evolutionarily driven. By what? Epigenetic discovery only refutes Darwin's approach and supports Lamarck, but doesn't guarantee an increase in complexity. I agree we are left with God alone or God plus an IM, never an IM alone.


> DAVID: Since one human generation is about 20 years, there are only five in 100 years. 15 major changes from apes in 3.5 million years requiring many, many mutations. Enough time?[/i]
> 
> dhw: Of course it's enough time - it happened!-That statement is a truism that doesn't tell us why or how it happened so quickly. In the Wistar Institute math conference of 1967 was the first and one of the best estimates of the lack of time by the Darwin chance mutation method. Human mutation rate is too slow for the time allotted. -> dhw: By all means argue that the mechanisms of life and evolution are too complex not to have been designed, but don't try to kid us that you know how long it normally takes for apes to evolve into humans.-As noted above estimates are present.

DAVID: All we know is that it happened rather quickly for all the changes to occur.
> 
> dhw: I really don't know what experience you or anyone else has had of how much time it OUGHT to take for the palate and throat etc. to change, and the same applies to every innovation. All we do know is that these things happened. Perhaps you would like to think they happened unnaturally quickly so that you can argue for preprogramming or dabbling, but the IM would solve your time problem anyway - if there is a time problem.-So, how fast does the IM work? Another unknown quantity. The evolutionists have theoretical math formulas about fixing a trait in so many generations. Since one human generation is about 20 years, there are only five in 100 years. 15 major changes from apes in 3.5 million years requiring many, many mutations. Enough time?


> dhw: Thank you for bringing a piece of serious scholarship to the debate, though I know you have described all this before. Just a very minor disagreement: accents appear much earlier than 8-10.-You misunderstand my statement and I was not clear. In this country of immigrants children under 10 pick up English easily without a foreign accent, but will have the local accent.- 
> dhw: As always, I agree that the necessary physical changes can hardly have been the result of random mutations. Whatever it was that led a group of apes to descend from the trees (if that's what happened) and start the whole process of “humanization” would undoubtedly have required an increasingly complex form of communication to make use of an ever expanding volume of information (conventional use of the word). Perhaps this is where the inventive mechanism would have come into play, changing structures in the same way as it changes structures in response to environmental pressures or opportunities. -All we now is that it happened rather quickly for all the changes that had to occur.


> ***********************
> 
> dhw: On a more serious “note”:
> 
> QUOTE: “Miyagawa has an alternate hypothesis about what created human language: Humans alone, as he has asserted in papers published in recent years, have combined an "expressive" layer of language, as seen in birdsong, with a "lexical" layer, as seen in monkeys who utter isolated sounds with real-world meaning, such as alarm calls. Miyagawa's "integration hypothesis" holds that whatever first caused them, these layers of language blended quickly and successfully.”
> 
> He apparently doesn't know that both birds and many animals both sing and utter sounds with real-world meaning, thus combining the expressive with the lexical. Humans are not "alone". He is, however, undoubtedly correct that whatever caused our own languages to develop as they have done was successful in causing our languages to develop as they have done. Whether this happened quickly or slowly might possibly depend on how you define "quickly" and "slowly".-However and whenever, language syntax seems to e universal throughout the very many human languages and built in at birth. Up to age 8-10 children can sop them up like a sponge and without an accent appearing. It allows us to think in word concepts and express the most complex of ideas, and only we humans have it. It involved many changes in tongue muscles, changing the shape of the palate and throat, dropping the larynx so inhaling food became a problem, requiring the development of a trap door over the main airway that closes it off as we swallow. It requires short clipped bursts of air carefully produced to express the sounds. Grunts and bellows and barks are not like it at all.This is a major example as to why I cannot accept unguided and unplanned evolution.