Evolution v Creationism: guided evolution? dhw? (Evolution)

by dhw, Tuesday, March 24, 2015, 19:57 (3314 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: Thank you for this clarification. As I keep repeating, I can't make any sort of statement about the technicalities. I rely on scientists like you and him. If you're now saying Wagner's proposal could work, then your only complaint about his article is that he doesn't tell us the mechanism must have been designed by God. And that is what you have said all along, since agreeing that an inventive mechanism is a possibility.
DAVID: My only complaint about his article is he makes it sound easy for DNA to stumble into new functional proteins when necessary. this is the key point copied from above: "The extreme difficulty in finding the right 'next' protein is a strong argument for design." He describes this issue beautifully and then talks all around it. I want you to think about the import of that sentence. It is equal to finding the right grain of sand in a desert. There are 15 major changes in separating humans from ape ancestors. Each change involved hundreds of individual mutations. Enough time for chance to do it? I doubt it. The Wistar Institute conference with mathematicians in 1967 raised this issue, long before the info we have today, and to me the timing looks worse and worse.-The same old question: “Enough time for chance to do it?” No. In all our discussions - and as long ago as when I wrote the “brief guide” - I have accepted the virtual impossibility of chance (in the form of random mutations) as the driving force of evolution. That is the whole basis of the argument for an inventive mechanism, in which microorganisms intelligently cooperate and combine into larger organisms. You have even said that Wagner's proposal might work, provided God designed it. The subject is what enables organisms to accelerate the processes you describe. Your own explanation is preprogramming of every single development, direct dabbling, or the inventive mechanism, all of which EXCLUDE chance. It's the origin of the inventive mechanism which then becomes the area of debate.