Contingent evolution (Introduction)

by dhw, Monday, June 30, 2014, 13:20 (3799 days ago) @ Balance_Maintained

DHW: The first forms of life were endowed with mechanisms that enabled them not only to reproduce but also to adapt and innovate, in accordance with the needs and/or opportunities presented by a changing environment. -TONY: That would fall under the category of guided evolution. I also explicitly stated (elsewhere) that I am not discounting cellular intelligence, but I do question the limitations of such intelligence.-I'm sorry if I've forgotten your acknowledgement of "cellular intelligence" elsewhere. It wasn't mentioned in your list, and I would certainly not have put it under the category of guided evolution. Even if your God endowed the first forms of life with these mechanisms (and I have left the question of origins open), I would argue that they could have been left to their own devices - i.e. your God did not intervene once he had set the process in motion. Again, this provides an explanation for what I see as the higgledy-piggledy bush of evolution. I think you are right to question the limitations, just as you and David are right to question whether such mechanisms could themselves have been the product of panpsychist processes. I have as many reservations about this hypothesis as I have about the hypotheses of Chance and of an eternally conscious form of energy that knows how to build a universe and life even before it's turned itself into matter. But I think it is just as worthy of serious consideration as those alternatives.