Panpsychism (Evolution)

by dhw, Thursday, December 20, 2012, 11:47 (4355 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: If every cell in every organism has always been under tight control by the genome, and if early forms of life did not have a liver, an eye, a leg, a penis, and if God did not pre-programme livers, eyes, legs and penises to appear billions of years after he invented the mechanisms for evolution, and if God did not manufacture these organs separately, what initiated the changes within existing organisms to bring about these new forms?-DAVID: Changes in the genome either as mutations or epigenetic alterations. The latter appear to be responses to challenges in a changing environment, climate, predators, etc. The former are accidental in the main. Individual cells have some control over their role in individual organs with changes in their personal DNA, but the organs have to form first under the germ cells' DNA.-Thank you. I must say I'm quite shocked by your apparent support for Darwinism with the statement that genetic mutations are accidental in the main. Remember we are talking about innovations. Epigenetic alterations as responses to challenges would suggest adaptation to me rather than innovation, and even if the borderlines there may be blurred, the Darwinian claim that new organs come about through random mutations followed by gradual refinement has always been a stumbling block for both of us. Organs, even in their most primitive state, are simply too complex to have come about by chance, bearing in mind (a) that they must function immediately to be useful, and (b) that they must also be integrated immediately into the rest of the organism. This is why I keep badgering away at the idea that if innovations were not the result of detailed preprogramming or interference by your God (which you clearly reject as well), they can only have come about through some form of inventive intelligence within the cell/cell communities. Are the two of us beginning to converge? I don't NEED this analogy for my wider panpsychic proposal, but it would be useful and in any case, I find it quite intriguing.