Intelligence & Evolution (Evolution)

by dhw, Saturday, October 19, 2013, 19:28 (3842 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: David, however, insists that cells are automatons, and so whatever innovations they have come up with can only have been preprogrammed by his god. Our difference is therefore not really one of definition at all. It is David's insistence that cells are automatons, and that divine preprogramming is the only explanation for innovations.-DAVID: Agreed-dhw: Our discussion concerns how this inventiveness is implemented. If you insist that cells are automatons, then they cannot possibly take decisions independently ... every innovation has to be preprogrammed, as must every strategic decision. That is the thesis you have proposed.
 
DAVID: No I haven't proposed the meaning in your statement. Life is very inventive, I repeat, as allowed by God's original programming. Through epigenetic mechanisms I suspect some of the oddball forms and lifestyles appeared. -You have agreed that divine preprogramming is the only explanation for innovations, but now oddball forms and lifestyles magically "appear"! So did the exquisitely engineered Venus flytrap 1) magically "appear" unprogrammed and without a clue what it was doing? 2) Did your God intervene and design it separately (Creationism)? 3) Did your God preprogramme it in the first cells? 4) Did its predecessor use its own initiative to design a new form (the intelligent cell)? 5) Did it produce itself through random mutations (neo-Darwinism)? If you insist that cells are automatons that can do nothing but obey their preprogrammed instructions, 2) and 3) are your only choices. Special creation is hardly an option for someone who believes evolution happened, and so you are left only with 3) which is what you agreed to in the first place! (See above.) And the same argument applies to every single innovation and every single lifestyle you can think of. (See also you own comment at the conclusion of this post.)- dhw; So 90% of biochemists have found different explanations from yours, although yours is based on your knowledge of biochemistry, and because they do not accept your explanation they are egotists.-DAVID: Their atheism demands the conclusions they reach.-Whereas of course your theism doesn't.-dhw: If cells are automatons, they can only have been preprogrammed to cooperate, and what they produce through their cooperation must also have been preprogrammed, all the way back to the first forms of life. Those first cells sure were loaded.-DAVID: Very likely. The orginal single cell at the origin of life was highly complex to have life, which makes OOL very difficult to replicate.-The difficulty of replicating OOL is not the issue here. You have again agreed that you think it very likely (not quite as strong as your usual insistence that it's the only explanation) that the first cells were preprogrammed by your God to produce every innovation from eukaroytes to humans, and this is based on your knowledge of biochemistry, in defiance of the 90% of egotistical, non-believing biochemists. Ah well, David, you may have the last laugh on all of us as you make your preprogrammed way through the pearly gates...