An inventive mechanism (Evolution)

by Balance_Maintained , U.S.A., Saturday, September 06, 2014, 21:29 (3729 days ago) @ dhw

DHW: 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: 
> -Well, aside from the fact that we have exactly 0 observations of species divergence, there is also the fact that the Bible directly states God "dabbled" after the fact, on a couple of occasions, actually. --
>DHW: 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?-
What you have missed out on is the "big picture". No life, or program, exists in a bubble, and climate/chemical changes are the least of its worries. We have discussed numerous examples of life that depends on other life in order to exist. This utterly rules out 1 & 6 because it requires communication and planning between cells, not only of different species, but of completely different types of life. (Floura & Fauna simultaneously.) -That leaves 2-5. Basic biochemistry, logic, and ironically the bible itself rules out 2, leaving us with 3-5. Of these, 4 has 0 observations to support it, in terms of speciation, and without speciation reverts back to 2,3, or 5. -3 & 5 however are not mutually exclusive, and a combination of limited versions of 3-5 would actually be closer to the truth, I think, as I have gone on about at some length in older posts.

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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.