Climate change: sudden cooling (Introduction)

by David Turell , Friday, May 16, 2014, 19:11 (3845 days ago) @ dhw


> dhw: As you say,the original forms of life must have been so complex and potentially inventive that when environmental changes took place, the inventive mechanisms that had been passed on by those first forms were able not only to adapt but also to experiment. Whatever those mechanisms are, they must be contained within the basic structural and functional unit of life, which is the cell. And whether or not this was designed by your god, the invention of new organs and the resultant origin of species therefore has to be the result of some form of inventive intelligence within the cell or, rather, following the principle of "emergence" (the whole is greater than the sum of its parts), the inventive intelligence of cell communities.-I have truncated your fair summary 
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> dhw: The various possible explanations for those who believe in evolution are therefore: 1) your god inventing the original "intelligent cell" but sometimes stepping in and fiddling, 2) your god preprogramming every single innovation, 3) your god leaving his invention to do its own innovating, 4) the original "intelligent cell" assembling itself by chance or 5) by some form of mental activity (panpsychist) within the chemicals themselves. For anti-evolutionists, the explanation can only be that God created each innovation separately.-My choices: 1) is possible, but the evidence of massive numbers of convergence and the bushiness of the evolutionary process suggest no fiddling.- 2) again possible but the reasoning about (1) still prevails. If pre-programmng were precise we would not see the bushiness and all the convergent attempts by evolution. Some directionality of preprogramming, I think is a definite probability, for after all evolution did arrive at US.- 3) Again, highly probable, as it appears from the helter-skelter branches of invention exhibited by the wondrous range of strange creatures and their very unusual lifestyles, evolution does not seem to follow a business-like straight and narrow path.-4) I reject completely. The theoretically proposed original ancestor cell is highly complex to start with, and the abortive attemps to study origin of life have met stone wall after stone wall. To repeat, all the scientists have shown is what does not work, and no current theory to explore looks promising. What they do produce is intelligently designed laboratory molecules, n ot related to natural attempts.-5) Yes, God's intelligent activity in cells is highly possible, or even probable, if we assume that God works at the quantum plain of reality and influences the genome. This is how directionality to humans might have been accomplished.-In summary: I think God used the process of evolution, perhaps because it is the only way our arrival could be accomplished. We must accept that we cannot known His reason. Straight creationism as an interpretation of Genesis is due to mistranslations of the ancient text. Seven days is really seven eons. We certainly see evolution. It is the mechanism of speciation that is simply not known to us. Darwin's proposal of gradual tiny steps is not correct. What is correct is now the subject of intense research and debate, with strict Darwinists slowly backing down.