An inventive mechanism (Evolution)

by dhw, Tuesday, September 02, 2014, 20:50 (3516 days ago) @ David Turell

Rather than reproduce all your interesting statements, I'll select those I feel require comment.-DAVID: I don't misunderstand your theory. I think it is impossible based on what we now know about genomic function. [...] I am still formulating a God-arranged process for speciation. I initially misused the concept of inventive mechanism as I was thinking out loud. I have defined it now as a set of pre-planned instructions for a new species in some still hidden area of the genome. I expect it to be found.-Firstly, I don't think you should use “inventive” of a mechanism that invents nothing and merely carries out pre-planned instructions. “Preplanning” and “preprogramming” are far clearer.-Secondly, these two statements together show double standards. My theory may seem impossible based on what we now know, but your theory is based on a “hidden area of the genome” which you “expect to be found”. What's the difference? Current knowledge sheds no light on the mystery of innovation. Therefore there are gaps in our knowledge, and your theory depends just as much as mine on speculation as to what lies in those gaps. -DAVID: Let's take your view of cells: 'cognitive": calls can chemically recognize signals and follow genomic instructions as to appropriate responses; 'sentient': cells recognize signals by chemical reactions, and give genomic guided responses; 'communicative': cells send messages to each other by different biochemical molecules which are recognizable as signals. How much mentation, as implied by your use of those words is really involved? None. Cells are primarily automatons. -You are following the same line as neuroscientists who trace the chemical and electrical processes that accompany human thought. All our activities can be described in such terms, but we don't know the nature of the thought that triggers the physical actions. Different forms of life may “think” differently from us. You recognize that with our fellow animals, because we have so much in common. But other forms of life, including plants and bacteria, do their own “thinking”, and if they didn't, they wouldn't survive. -DAVID: It is very apparent to me (and Tony) that speciation requires the input of new information in the genome. Either the information is already there, ready to be tapped when required by environmental changes, or there is directed input. I favor the former.
 
This is your preprogramming versus your dabbling. Here are the implications. Evolution requires information being passed from one generation to another, from the beginning of life to the present. Therefore according to you every innovation, whether of organs or of modes of behaviour, had to be programmed into the first cells, allowing for every environmental change that was to trigger those innovations: kidneys, eyes, spider's silk, fire-ant's raft - all to be passed down through billions of organisms and generations and years and environments. Of course we shall never find those first “computers”, so what do you expect to find in, say, the spider's genome? A little chip, perhaps, saying “not to be used till the year 400 million BC”? The dabble theory is just as fanciful. Your infinite God of pure energy somehow contriving - perhaps through psychokinesis - to manipulate the microscopic globules of material in such a way that they will form kidneys in, say, half a dozen kidneyless organisms to make sure at least two of them survive to promulgate kidneydom. And personally planting chemicals and instructions into the spider to make sure it spins its silk. You called this “intricate planning”, so how else could God have planned it, if not by dabbling or popping a heritable silk-spinning chip into the computer section of the first living cells?
 
DAVID: As I see it, your theory requires itty-bitty, which has never been in the fossil record. Remember, I started as an agnostic. There are reasons why I am a theist, and this is a major one.-My theory does not require itty-bitty. Intelligent men tried to fly, and a lot of them got killed when their contraptions didn't work. But other intelligent men put various bits and pieces together, using the knowledge acquired from their predecessors, and were able to fly. Either the invention succeeds or it fails. That is the process I envisage with intelligent cell communities cooperating. Many of the organisms will die. But some will get the formula right (innovations can only take place within existing organisms), and then you will have speciation. It's only a hypothesis. And it does depend on us finding that cells/cell communities can “think” intelligently and inventively, to a degree beyond what is now known. Your two theories (preprogramming and dabbling) seem to me to depend on our finding something a few million degrees beyond what is now known. Remember, I started as a theist, and then an atheist. There are reasons why I am an agnostic, and this is a major one.