

by David Turell @, Thursday, August 27, 2020, 15:51 (343 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: This discussion originated with an article describing evolution of fins to hands, and you wrote: “Devolving per Behe means that all the future organism models might be present in the original DNA/genome.” If you think the example supports your theory and his, I have every right to ask my question, so please answer it.

I have many times. Per Behe, all advances involve removing of DNA code. If that is the case, original DNA held all the information needed, and what was removed was code that held back advances.

dhw: As an alternative to your theory, I proposed that your God produced exactly what he wanted: a mechanism allowing cells to work out their own designs etc., including all the beneficial and deleterious ones that have produced the vast variety of life’s history and the death he “required”.

DAVID: As usual you have reintroduced your God who concedes control over evolution to the organisms themselves, as if they could understand design for future purpose.


DAVID: I know your belief which is completely opposite to mine. God speciates and designs for future problems.

dhw: Repeating your belief is no excuse for attacking my proposal because organisms must foretell the future when I keep repeating that my theory ONLY requires responses to their present.

We go back to the huge gaps in evolution that so troubled Gould, and you studiously ignore. The new organisms are much different from the past and miraculously can handle the future they find themselves entering into with all its different challenges. Design for the future required.


dhw: No multicellular organism was necessary for life to survive, since bacteria have done very nicely, thank you. […] Whether the above system would have produced humans is irrelevant. You can argue that it was lucky for us that it did, but if it hadn’t, so what?

DAVID: We wouldn't be here to do battle on this site.

dhw: Understood.


dhw: We have discussed this over and over again. Yes, we CAN think of a reason for the advances of evolution, glanced at in the article on the theoretical fusion of archaea and bacteria. Yet again, my proposal: advances took place after intelligent cells had begun to cooperate in finding methods of dealing with ever changing conditions and increasingly varied econiches. This particular “fusion” may have enabled the combined organism to survive without oxygen, while their buddies carried on quite happily WITH oxygen. So we already have diversity, leading over billions of years to the huge variety of ways in which organisms cope with changing conditions, finding food, and avoiding becoming food. There is nothing mysterious about the concept of cooperation between living organisms or about progressive advances as changing conditions require or allow an ever great variety of methods. The mystery lies in the origin of life itself and of the mechanisms that have enabled cells to reproduce, vary, and act with the intelligence so evident in all their actions. I agree with you that in terms of intelligence, H. sapiens is the culmination (at least so far) of the whole process, but you asked why evolution advanced beyond bacteria. None of it was “necessary” in the great scheme of things – the original life forms survived, but when some of these were exposed to different conditions, they began the whole process. In time, I would say the agency that drove (rather than “forced”) advances became a mixture of pressures and opportunities for survival in response to changing conditions.

You've not skipped over the starting point of how life began and what gave it the ability to evolve by adaptations. What was the cause? Nothing is not an answer. You'll keep it mysterious, a non-answer. I'll accept God, the designer of all you have just described.

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