An inventive mechanism (Evolution)

by Balance_Maintained , U.S.A., Friday, September 05, 2014, 20:42 (3730 days ago) @ dhw

TONY: Sorry, I thought I had been clear on that. I do not believe in divergence through gradual evolution beyond the species level. As for how God did it, I can't say, only speculate as we so often do.
> 
>DHW: Yes, you made it very clear, as quoted above, that you do not believe in progressive evolution through innovation. (None of us three believe in gradualism.) But David does believe in it, so I asked you to explain why you didn't like David's speculative hypothesis. And since you believe in separate creation of the species (in the broader sense - spiders/dragonflies/dogs) I asked David to explain why he didn't like your speculative hypothesis. I thought we might all learn something from such an exchange. You have both been quick to attack my own speculative hypothesis, so why the sudden coyness?!
> -I am going to go out on a limb and say that David doesn't like my reasoning for two reasons. A) David is a trained scientist, B) Though a theist, David is not (to my knowledge) a Christian, and prefers his God a little less "human" (and I use the term VERY loosely). Whereas I see God as an individual, powerful though he is, with thoughts and feelings similar in kind with ours, David sees him(it) without any personification. There are certain things that, to me at least, make more sense when you accept that personification. For example, why could love not be the motivating factor for the time spent painstakingly crafting the universe. --> TONY: I think of creation as a giant computer program. (Quantum) Physics acts as a native instructions for the machine logic, applying the required force to operate the components. On top of that you have Chemistry, which acts like a sort of "assembly" language, under and interfacing with the rules of physics. On top of that, you have the basic rules of biology, that work as an operating system, using the language of Chemistry. Within this framework you have DNA which acts like C++, a compilation of digital "libraries", bits of programs that are known to work very efficiently and can be organized in numerous different ways to create any possible program you can conceive of by arranging them in different ways. Just like a master engineer/programmer could create a computer starting with nothing but sand (silicon), time, and energy, I think God used pretty much the same methodology. 
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> DHW: The idea of a mechanism that can change itself or be changed into virtually any form one can imagine lies at the heart of evolution. The great question, apart from how such a mechanism came into being (= the existence or not of God), is how it functions. You are a careful writer, and I assume when you say “can be organized”, your use of the passive is a reference to God dabbling. David doesn't much like that. He thinks God's programmes, handed down from the first tiny cells of 3.7 billion years ago, automatically switch themselves on when the environment provides the trigger. You don't like that, because it entails progressive evolution through innovation. That's why I hoped you would both exchange views on the subject.->....I don't doubt that an omnipotent God could do it, just as I don't doubt that he could create an inventive mechanism that would do the same thing without his interference, but I can't imagine him spending billions of years painstakingly and personally making the first clockwork trilobites etc. etc. and popping the instructions in so that they can reproduce a few zillion more clockwork trilobytes (till they disappear) while he goes on to manufacture the first few clockwork spiders etc. etc. The idea bothers David too. I'm sure we would all learn a lot if only you would exchange views on the subject.-
"Can be organized" is a reference to the creation process, yes. When you write a computer program, you might write:-int a;
int b;
int c;
a = 9;
b = 22;-If(a >= B) then c = a*b;-
But what is "int", why are their ";, >=, =" and what do they mean. Each of those 'operators' requires another bit of code somewhere in the library to explain just how they work as well some other code somewhere to translate them. Once that code is written however, you can use and reuse it at will, so every bit of code that you write, can be reused anywhere that it would work. -This would greatly reduce the amount of time and effort needed to create each species. Humans can mass produce things once we have the right recipe for them, even things that vary slightly from one instance of them to the next. When you "zoom" out far enough, you can see that this mass production is sort of what has happened. Designing the rules that govern things and then setting them in motion takes far less time and energy than hand-crafting each and every particle.

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What is the purpose of living? How about, 'to reduce needless suffering. It seems to me to be a worthy purpose.