An inventive mechanism (Evolution)

by dhw, Tuesday, September 23, 2014, 12:55 (3712 days ago) @ David Turell
edited by dhw, Tuesday, September 23, 2014, 13:08

dhw: So now we have a mechanism that can do “a great deal of its own advancement planning” (you: 11 September), is situated in the genome, and directs cellular activity. This is all part of the evolutionary process “that God could have started” (you: 11 September). Agreement at last. Except that if it can do its own planning, the mechanism in the genome is obviously not simply obeying instructions programmed into it 3.7 billion years ago.-DAVID: Remembering that I don't know how God managed evolution but I presume He used it, I suggest an inventive mechanism emplanted by God as a special layer in the genome can respond to new environmental changes, which changes may or may not be planned by God. Did God hurl the Chicxulub asteroid, or did it just happen as an independent event in an evolving universe not entirely controlled by God? There is no way of knowing.-There is no way of knowing whether ANY of our hypotheses are correct - including the existence of God! Meanwhile, I'm delighted that here you have shifted your planning hypothesis from a programme implanted in the first cells to changes in the environment. Personally (still wearing my theist's hat), I doubt if 3.7 billion years ago God said to himself, “3.6 billion years from now, I'm gonna chuck an asteroid.” I'd say it's more likely he decided 60-100 million years ago that he'd had enough of them thar dinos and would try something else. Or, having set the evolutionary and the randomly changing environmental mechanisms in motion, he just let it all happen.
 
DAVID: So my view of Shapiro, et. al. is that the genome is in control, and the cells really bend to genome control, while being allowed some attempts at adaptation by self-methylation of the DNA. And latest research shows that methylation is lasting thru generations, but in no sense that speciation occurs by that mechanism.
-We need to recap on your dilemma. You believe evolution happened, i.e. God did not separately create every single innovation that led from bacteria to humans. You proposed a theory that he installed a computer programme in the first living cells that would be passed down though 3.7 billion years to implement every innovation when the environment allowed (or when God preprogrammed every environmental change to happen). The alternative I have proposed is that there is a mechanism within the cells - you have placed it more precisely within the genome, which I'm happy to accept - that responds to environmental changes not only by adapting but also by inventing. In your first paragraph you have accepted the idea of an inventive mechanism in the genome. In your second paragraph you only allow for some attempts at adaptation and say there is no evidence that speciation occurs by that mechanism. Then what does the inventive mechanism invent? Are you still adhering to your preprogramming hypothesis, or are you acknowledging the possibility that innovations are created autonomously through an internal mechanism which your God may have installed? Your only alternatives are random mutations and separate creation of every innovation. Resolve your dilemma. Make a firm decision. And instead of predicting that science will discover a 3.7-billion-year-old computer programme in the genome, join me in predicting that it will uncover a mechanism capable not only of adaptation but also of invention. Commit yourself. And I'll let you have half my Nobel Prize money.