Different in degree or kind (Introduction)

by dhw, Monday, December 23, 2013, 19:43 (3771 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: Life does not invent anything. There is no such organism as life. You have a choice here: either the organisms (cells and cell communities) do the inventing, which means they have an inventive intelligence of their own, or your God does it. Since you insist that cells are automatons that can only obey instructions, and we've agreed to jettison random mutations, this can only mean that according to you God does all the inventing (preprogramming or dabbling).-DAVID: I use the word life to refer to living matter, an emergent state. Living matter creates divergent forms or variations. Our argument is 'how'. You have clearly defined my answer. And cells do have an inventive intelligence, implanted in genetic code. I have given a source for the code, you have not. Your answers seem to be 'it is just there', but no 'how' is presented.-My clear definition of your answer is that cells are preprogrammed automatons, and so God does all the inventing. How, then, according to you can cells have an inventive intelligence? What is "implanted in genetic code"? If you mean independent cellular intelligence, I have always accepted the possibility that your God may have created it. My focus is on how evolution works. But I suspect you are again referring to an implanted programme (i.e. for all the innovations from single cell to humans), in which case the inventive intelligence is God's, not that of the cells. Too much obfuscation here.-dhw: Please explain why you or Conway Morris believe that a few billion years ago your God preprogrammed six different types of eyes (or dabbled to make them), when only one type is needed for what you say was the purpose of evolution: humans.
DAVID: What I am saying is the living material is given enough inventive techniques that convergence can occur in many ways. -More obfuscation. Once more, why would God design six different types of eyes if he only needed one to fulfil his purpose of producing humans? Are you now saying that you and Conway Morris do not after all believe in your divine preprogramming of the first cells with all innovations leading to humans?
 
dhw: I can only repeat that if you insist God planned humans from the beginning, the first cells must have been chock-a-block with programmes for the billions of innovations necessary to lead from single cells to us. And if you find this a strange way of getting there, you should at least be prepared to consider an alternative explanation.-DAVID: I am prepared, always have been. Theistic evolution provides fur early inventiveness that progresses much as we see human invention: the Wright brothers motorized kite to Boeing 747s. One inventive change builds on the next. I really doubt much dabbling.-That is precisely how I see evolution working, theistic or not. And I would point out that the Wright brothers' motorized kite did not contain a programme for all the innovations needed to build a Boeing 747. Each innovation required an additional act of invention by a new team of intelligent inventors. A good analogy for evolution through the inventiveness of the "intelligent cell". Thank you.