Innovation (Introduction)

by David Turell , Monday, May 13, 2013, 15:28 (4213 days ago) @ dhw


> dhw: The most likely trigger is a massive change in the environment. This would have allowed existing organisms equally massive opportunities for innovation. The intelligent cell/genome/DNA within existing organisms therefore came up with a vast array of innovations. This makes sense to me. I think it makes sense to you too, provided I insert the word God (see later).-Agreed. The most likely change was the massive rise in oxygen, but oxygen is like a poison unless antioxidents were invented at the same time to modify the effects of oxygen in the living organism. In biology there are always important side issues, life is so complex. Specified complexity produces life.-> 
> DAVID: What I don't know, and you keep asking, does God step in and adjust things or it is all in the plan from the beginning?
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> dhw:And if he has to step in, I keep asking you HOW he does it.-I have no idea, just as I have no idea how He arranged the start of life.
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> DAVID: I don't know how much God preplanned in the genome and how much tweaking He had to do. I just know He was the production manager. Nothing else makes sense.
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> dhw:I offered you a divine scenario: "God has implanted in the genome the ability to invent new organs to cope with or exploit changes in the environment. The genome gives out instructions to all the different cells, which cooperate, as instructed, to build the liver." (Plus, of course, everything it is connected to). In my view, this obviates the need for tweaking, even during the Cambrian. It also obviates the need for millions of innovations to have been preprogrammed in the very first life forms and handed down through billions of years and zillions of generations of different organisms (a scenario which does indeed make me incredulous). What are your objections?-I have no objections, but your divine scenario assumes God is so perfect He can forsee all the complications when there are two evolutionary systems, life's and the Earth's running at the same time. I don't assume as much about God as religions or you do in your imaginations. I think you are more affected by the stories about God, created by religious pretentions of knowledge, than I am. Surprising for an agnostic, and I am the believer! 
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> dhw:However, if he does tweak, I would still like to know how YOU think he does it: telekinesis, operations in his skylab, magic? You are constantly dismissing my panpsychist hypothesis as nebulous, which I freely admit, and pressing me for details which I cannot provide. I demand equal rights for agnostics!-I don't know and don't care, and that knowledge of his methology is not important to me, it is so clear that He is Production Manager. Remember his admonition about asking direct questions. "I am who I am". God purposely concealed Himself in or behind Quantum reality, and He is going to stay that way. We are back to the leap of faith, and admittedly not an easy leap. The early religions, especially Christianity relied on lots of miracles to entice belief. Kindergarten games! They sold love and punishment, a nice combination. Jesus did not ask for a church about himself. He sold the Hillelian idea (about 50 years old at the time) that we needed to respect one another. I stop there, after discerning the living proof life and the Earth present of His works. "Who is like You, working wonders".