Review: Darwin\'s Doubt (Introduction)

by dhw, Friday, September 20, 2013, 20:00 (4082 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: A full exposition of the problem the Cambrian Explosion is for Darwinism:-QUOTE: "This much is clear: The Darwinists cannot live with ID as their enemy. They can easily co-exist with creationism, but that came from the Bible, which can be dismissed in our secular age. They rage at ID, on the other hand, because it challenges them in what they have seen as their strong suit: Science."-http://spectator.org/archives/2013/09/18/darwinism-and-materialism-they/-This article quite rightly ... in my view ... dismisses random mutations as mathematically implausible, and clearly champions ID, but ID itself (aside from Creationism, which "can be dismissed in our secular age") has no explanation for The Cambrian Explosion other than the nebulous formula "God designed it".
 
QUOTE: "Meyer applies this to the question of the origin of the information necessary to produce new forms of animal life. He argues that the only known cause of the origin of the kind of digital information that arises in the Cambrian explosion is intelligent activity. He quotes the information theorist Henry Quastler who stated that "the creation of information is habitually associated with conscious activity." Thus, he concludes, using Darwin's principle, that intelligent design provides the best explanation for the Cambrian information explosion."-HOW? This, David, is what lies at the heart of our own long discussion on the concept of the intelligent cell. If not through preprogramming or direct creation, then it can only be through the independent workings of the cell.-QUOTE: The protagonists of punctuated equilibrium came up with a mechanism that cannot plausibly produce so much anatomical change so quickly.-There is only one mechanism outside a directly intervening God that COULD produce it: namely, what the article calls "a high-tech nano-factory complicated beyond comprehension" ... which we all know as the cell. So when we talk of ID explaining the Cambrian Explosion, we have four options: 1) God himself designing every new organ, 2) God designing the intelligent mechanism that designed every new organ, 3) the intelligent mechanism creating itself by chance, 4) the intelligent mechanism evolving through some kind of panpsychist process. In 2, 3 and 4, the intelligent mechanism itself is the same. Choose whichever option you like, and you have ID as an explanation of The Cambrian Explosion. What may not seem feasible are the explanations of the explanation (= the four options)!