An inventive mechanism (Evolution)

by David Turell , Thursday, September 11, 2014, 22:21 (3724 days ago) @ dhw


> dhw: Then as an evolutionist, you seem to have no choice: 3.7 billion years ago, your God implanted the very first living cells with programmes for every single innovation ... I suspect some people would call that “wild speculation”. Your alternative is to reject evolution and opt for separate creation. But you are against that.-It is just my dilemma. I just don't know how God managed evolution. Since I believe a type of evolutionary But evolution could not have occurred without intelligent planning, once chance is excluded.-> 
> dhw; Why does separate creation require more “mental power” than creating a computer programme to be passed down through billions of species over billions of years? -You have misintrepreted. Separate creation, stepwise, requires less mental power than doing it all from beginning plans.
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> dhw: I asked you how, if cells were automatons, the brain cells of one person could work their way round an abnormality while someone else's couldn't. You said it was easy: brain plasticity.-Each individual has a brain plasticity on a bell curve, some more facile than others.
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> dhw: None of this explains why some brain cell communities can cope with abnormality and others can't, if all them are automatons merely obeying God's instructions.-Explained above. Biology in individuals has much variation.- 
> dhw:“We are trying to figure out the molecular pathways by which the cells make the decisions and decide if they need to kill themselves.”-Note in the quote 'moleclar pathways'. How much thought do you think moleculs have? These are standarized biochemical reactions in cells.-> 
> dhw:I am puzzled by the fact that your God (so mentally powerful that he doesn't need to create species separately) has invented a programme which makes some automated cells become “rogue”, other automated cells and parts of cells talk to one another, and automated cells take decisions as to whether or not they should kill themselves, though you say none of them can do anything except obey God's instructions. Do you not also find it confusing?-Not a bit. God did not invent "rogue cell programs". Cells are 99.99+% perfect in avoiding error, but they are making molecules at splint second timing and occasionally that editing process makes an error. So there is a program for self-destruction. That is what is provided by God
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> dhw: Strange that Calarco talks of an organism's ability to diversify its cellular function etc. It's almost as if he's saying that there is some mechanism within the organism that takes such decisions.-Again, I'm looking for a way to have speciation as part of the evolutionary program written by god. 
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> dhw: In your post earlier today, there were two very striking sentences: “...I feel God could create an evolutionary system that could do a great deal of its own advancement planning.” And “Certainly, evolution looks like there was a process in place that God could have started.” An evolutionary system can't plan. Living organisms can plan, thereby creating a system. And so you are actually saying that living organisms could do a great deal of their own advancement planning.-No, I am not. -> dhw: And if evolution is a process that God started, but he did NOT do all the “advancement planning”, he would have had to implant some kind of planning mechanism within the organisms he created. .. Where would he have put the mechanism for advancement planning?-An evolutionary system can plan if programmed properly. An evolutionary program can include a planning section for more complexity, and it is probably a layer in the genome. Again, chance doesn't work. Living cells are controlled by the genome, but have the ability to make small modifications: i.e., Darwin's finch beaks.