An inventive mechanism (Evolution)

by dhw, Friday, September 05, 2014, 12:37 (3730 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: True, but my problem with your theory is that you are giving properties to cells that I know they do not have and are not capable of using. 
dhw: You do not know this. You believe it.-DAVID: Yes I DO know it. I know the function of cells and I know how they operate and I am fully aware of cells capabilities. You are one inventing stuff about cells that cannot exist. My idea of a creative mechanism, if you noted, included the idea that plans are there, ready for the using when indicated. Creation of something new happens when necessary as evolution unfolds. I view your theory as wishful thinking to get around the idea that the genome is a computer program, and the only two choices we know to explain evolution are chance or design. Asking the cells to design themselves into new organs when they have no ability to plan is, in my view, a third way that cannot exist, in any reasonable theory.-I have indeed noted the fact that according to your reasonable theory (which bothered you on 20 August but stopped bothering you when you decided to call preprogramming an inventive mechanism, in a volte face that involved distorting the meaning of “inventive”), your God installed a programme in the first living cells that passed down plans for every single innovation and natural wonder that evolution has produced for the last 3.7 billion years. And this programme also allows for every single variation in environmental conditions. You are confident that this programme will be found in the genomic computer, where your God has hidden it. You dismiss the idea of your God inventing - and hiding - a mechanism that can do its own inventing (a bit like the mechanism he invented for humans, and other animals). I wonder how one can tell the difference between cells that have organized themselves by cooperation and cells that have followed a given plan. It's like ants, which for all the world seem to be thinking as they plan their homes and their strategies and their responses to changing environments. But you know they are not thinking. They are obeying a programme God prepared for them 3.7 billion years ago. You also prefer this to your God dabbling, although your fellow theist Tony prefers the dabbling theory for separate species because, unlike you, he doesn't believe in progressive evolution through innovation. All three hypotheses exclude chance. I hope this is a fair summary!