An inventive mechanism (Evolution)

by dhw, Saturday, September 06, 2014, 11:40 (3729 days ago) @ Balance_Maintained

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. -TONY: 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.-I'm sure all this is true, but David is probably better qualified to explain why he doesn't like your reasoning. My question to you was why you didn't like his reasoning, which is that God preprogrammed every innovation and wonder into the first living cells, to be passed down through billions of years until each one was triggered by a changed environment, thereby leading to evolution by innovation. However, we may be able to move on from this, thanks to the next section of your post: -TONY: 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. [...] 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.-Do forgive me for leaving out the rest of your post, most of which is incomprehensible to me. (I'm sorry, but computer language, like most other specialized languages of science and technology, is way beyond my horribly limited range.) What I have quoted suggests a possible compromise between your beliefs and David's, so I too will go out on a limb and put a new theistic hypothesis to you both, based on your two different sets of beliefs:-Cells are miniature computers, as David claims, and - as I have learned recently - an outside operator can get inside my computer and do what he/she likes with it. Your God is the operator, working by psychokinesis, as he has always done. He set up the first living cells with a first, comparatively simple programme (e.g. just carry on reproducing), and then proceeded to transmit programme after programme to enable his mechanism to expand to multicellularity, and incorporate one innovation after another. Each innovation entailed signals to the cells to create different combinations and, if necessary, different functions depending on their place in, or in relationship to, the new community. Advantages of this hypothesis: 1) it removes the necessity for God to have preprogrammed the first living cells with every single innovation and wonder to be passed down through 3.7 billion years; 2) it allows for evolution, since the succession of new programmes would clearly have been progressive and would have taken place within existing organisms; 3) it also allows for God dabbling, which has hitherto been a problem for theistic evolutionists. The dabbling comes with his altering existing cell combinations through new programmes without having to create new species from scratch; 4) it precludes the necessity for God to factor in environmental changes from the very beginning. -We now have six hypotheses, bearing in mind that evolution entails common descent (i.e. all organisms have descended from earlier organisms): 1) Evolution happened through innovations caused by random mutations; 2) Evolution didn't happen: God made every species independently at the same time; 3) Evolution didn't happen: God made every species separately at different times; 4) Evolution happened: God preprogrammed the first cells to pass on every stage of it; 5) Evolution happened: God directed it through innovations, as he inserted sequences of new computer programmes into different existing cell communities; 6) Evolution happened through innovations created by intelligent cell communities, whose intelligence may or may not have been created by a God.-What have I missed out?