Innovation (Introduction)

by dhw, Monday, May 20, 2013, 17:55 (4206 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw; However, with your own theistic hypothesis, I would say that God setting up a mechanism which autonomously produces innovations = evolution, but God intervening and manipulating the mechanism = creationism. Perhaps, then, you are a creationist evolutionist.-DAVID: As I have stated right along, I am a theistic evolutionist, and the fundamentalist Christians don't like us. They are much more creationist than I am. They want more direct handling, less dabbling.-I can't see any difference between direct handling and dabbling. Either God intervenes or he doesn't. If you believe innovations/species are "created" de novo by your God's intervention, instead of your God's mechanism inventing them de novo, you are a creationist. In Darwin's day, "Authors of the highest eminence seem to be fully satisfied with the view that each species has been independently created" ... whereas common descent "accords better with what we know of the laws impressed on matter by the Creator"( Recapitulation and Conclusion). THAT is theistic evolution, as endorsed by the Rev. Charles Kingsley, whom Darwin quotes in later editions. A creationist evolutionist seems to me like a contradiction in terms.-dhw (echoing David's attack on my panpsychist hypothesis): God is "thinking energy", its intelligence arrives nebulously, somehow it organizes its thoughts and planning, a mental bootstrapping by some unknown method all of which had to be in place before the big bang. That is the major weakness of your God theory. (Actually my panpsychist intelligence did NOT have to be in place before the big bang, which is a major strength of my hypothesis.)-DAVID: No weakness. Your theory is weaker, avoiding first cause. What caused the big bang which resulted in a designer universe fit for life? You are simply popping in a weird mechanism after life starts, so your theory begins late in the game. I want a theory from the beginning. Give me a beginning in your theory.-I note your avoidance of the exact parallels between your nebulous God theory and my nebulous panpsychist theory! Meanwhile, round and round we go...I have told you many times that my first cause is the same as yours: eternal energy, which cannot have a beginning. But instead of that energy SOMEHOW being aware of itself and saying: "I'm gonna go bang", it just goes bang (same beginning to our universe as yours - if we accept the big bang theory.) The "weird mechanism after life starts" is what we have agreed to call "the intelligent genome", and it is no weirder for being the product of evolved awareness than it is for being the product of eternal awareness. (See below under the ape heading for more details.)-DAVID: Note how the big bang makes atheists uncomfortable. Should do the same for picket fence agnostics:-http://tbsblog.thebestschools.org/2013/05/08/some-five-star-members-of-the-i-hate-the-b...-I retain an open mind on all things connected with the big bang, including whether it really was a big bang, but it doesn't make the slightest difference to my panpsychist hypothesis, as explained above, and if I were an atheist, placing my faith in chance, I doubt if it would make the slightest difference to that faith either.-****** -Under: "Another we are apes story":-dhw; In my panpsychist hypothesis, this is how intelligence may have evolved from the beginning ... through energy initially experiencing change from within matter until it gains enough awareness and experience to change matter itself. Weird, of course, but is there any explanation of consciousness that isn't weird?-DAVID: Yours is beyond weird. Energy controls matter, not the other way around.-Nowhere have I said that matter controls energy! Energy controlling matter is the whole point of the hypothesis! Non-conscious first cause energy transforms itself into non-conscious matter. Matter by its very nature changes. Energy within matter SOMEHOW becomes aware of change. Through this awareness it learns to control matter.-Let me repeat that I too find the idea weird ... but no more weird than first cause energy SOMEHOW being eternally aware of itself, or globules of matter by sheer chance assembling themselves in such a way that SOMEHOW they become aware of themselves. All three hypotheses depend on an unknown and unknowable SOMEHOW, and anyone who favours one hypothesis is in no position to dismiss the others because of their weirdness, irrationality, nebulousness and incredibility!