Natures wonders: making spider silk (Introduction)

by David Turell , Sunday, August 24, 2014, 19:01 (3742 days ago) @ dhw


> dhw: Until a week ago, David was adamant that the only possible explanations for all the amazingly complex innovations and Nature's Wonders were programmes planted by God in the first living cells, to be implemented through billions of generations and organisms, or God dabbling (= creationism). ..... Suddenly David has embraced this idea, but insists on somehow separating the inventive mechanism from the cells. My argument is that the inventive mechanism (perhaps invented by your God, but that's another issue) is within the cells/cell communities just as the brain is within the body (Albrecht-Buehler equates the cell's “brain” with the centrosome). David's is that the mechanism is within the genome (which is part of the cell/cell communities). I see no difference.-Of course, the inventive mechanism is implanted within the cells, and I do accept that as an alternative to dabbling, but it is equivalent to preplanning, and must have existed in the first living cells. As I said to Tony, the only possibilities are some form of preplanning or an inventive mechanism that follows intelligent plans, or God dabbles.
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> dhw: The basis of this discussion, though, is that David and I believe evolution happened - i.e. that all living forms descended from earlier living forms. The enormous complexity of all organs and Nature's Wonders is not, in our view, explicable by Darwin's random mutations. ....Perhaps, David, you would explain the difference, in terms of how evolution works, between my proposed inventively, cooperatively intelligent mechanism situated in the cells/cell communities (that may have been created by your God) and the mechanism you are proposing.-I'll accept it as long as you recognize that cells, themselves, alone or in groups have very little power, are generally very automatic, and we have no idea whether an inventive mechanism takes charge when it has to to answer challenges in nature, or the cells respond to the challenge by asking the inventive mechanism to take charge. Cell comunities without such a mechanism are not capable of doing much. To create a kidney requires planning.
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> dhw: Of course an individual cell is not as “intelligent” as a community of cells, and the more combinations you have, the greater the variety of intelligences.-You can pile cells upon cells, look at completed organisms, and you cannot find the intelligence you want, except as provided in inventive planning from the beginning.-> dhw: Theistic evolution, as I see it, therefore means God created a mechanism which enables cells/cell communities to do their own inventing, adjusting to or exploiting changes in the environment, without God interfering or preplanning. -The cells don't do their own inventing. And the inventive mchanism implies pre-planning.