Cell Memories (Identity)

by dhw, Sunday, August 10, 2014, 19:54 (3546 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: God “stepped in” (as opposed to organisms inheriting kidney plans he'd placed in the first living cells billions of years back) presumably means he grabbed hold of various existing organisms and fiddled around with their cell communities (organs) so that he could turn some of them into kidneys.-DAVID (9 August) I do not prefer dabbling by God as the method He used.
DAVID: (7 August) You theory does not explain the huge gap of the Cambrian Explosion. My theory assumes God stepped in at this point in evolution.-Confusion reigns. Your assumption is that God stepped in to organize the Cambrian (= he dabbled), but you prefer the theory that he preprogrammed all the new organs and species in the first living cells.
 
dhw: In short, you believe in microevolution but not in macroevolution.-DAVID: I believe we see micoevolution all the time. Macroevolution is totally unexplained by any scientific theory. Darwin's approach is simply: the final products of evolution are here, therefore they were produced by evolution, let's say by natural selection. Circular reasoning. The whole thing is a tautology.-We have both long since rejected Darwin's random mutations as the mechanism, and agreed that natural selection only selects from what already exists. The subject of this discussion is my hypothesis of the intelligent cell, and your hypotheses of God preprogramming everything from the very start (which you might call theistic evolution) or God dabbling (which = Creationism minus the bible). In the past we have both accepted that evolution happened, i.e. all forms of life are descended from earlier forms. If you are not a Creationist, you are stuck with God preprogramming every single innovation right from the beginning. Is that really what you believe? -dhw: I agree that we have to work backwards, and although I understand (and partly share) your scepticism concerning the inventive powers of cellular communities, I do not understand why you say it doesn't fit the history.
DAVID: I don't think the intelligent cells have the intellectual power to create macroevolution all by themselves, which opinion is based upon my reaction to the work described by Shapiro.-I have already accepted that area of your scepticism in the sentence you have quoted. But you claimed my hypothesis of the intelligent cell didn't fit the history, and I pointed out that it offered exactly the same explanation of the history (punctuated equilibrium, the Cambrian, the comparatively sudden appearance of new organs and species) as your own theory - namely, intelligent design. You may not believe cells are capable of it, but if they were, that would give us the same outcome as your preprogramming or your dabbling hypotheses.