An inventive mechanism (Evolution)

by David Turell , Tuesday, September 30, 2014, 15:25 (3705 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: [...] we have agreed that the genome may well contain an inventive mechanism which can take the organism beyond mere adaptation and create a new species.
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> dhw: Such an agreement is meaningless if you insist that “inventive” means obeying God's instructions as opposed to making autonomous decisions.-We are agreeing as to location only, not underlying mechanisms. There we are far apart.
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> DAVID: What you have not accepted is a cause for the presence of intelligent information in the genome. It will need lots of intelligent information to change an organism into an entirely new species. Invention requires thought an planning to intergrate all the new parts so they work together. 
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> dhw: Of course I accept all of this. Any innovation requires collecting, processing and integrating information, and working out new ways of using it. How this is done is the mystery we're trying to solve.-Of course the process of information gathering and planning are needed, but you persist in leaving out the pre-existing information which is part of any mechanism that is collating the requirements (new information)for a new species. -> 
> dhw: In any case, my position allows for a universal consciousness. The “intelligent information” your God may have provided in the first place is everything that goes to make up the cell, including its ‘inventive mechanism' or ‘brain'.-Fair enough, up to a point: the brain has information which guides its decision-making function-
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> dhw: I repeat: I have never ever said that cells conjure up new species by influencing their genomes.-But so far in research, the only DNA changes we know about are influences from cells. We don't know of other mechanisms that have been proven. We are theorizing.-> dhw: I repeat: The genome, the ‘brain' of the cell/cell community, coordinates the information gathered by the cell/cell community and works out the new combination.-Again, based on collating with information already existing in the genome as to how to shape a phenotype, coordinate organs and organs' functions. Current genomes already do this, but we don't know how.
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> dhw: “Knowledge of instructions” can only = doing what God has told it to do. That makes God, not the mechanism, the inventor. In my hypothesis, your God's role would have been to invent the inventive mechanism, just as you might say your God invented the human brain, but humans invented the motor car.-And just how did the first car appear? The first ones looked like wagons with simple motors. The human brain ( Ford and others) took previous experience, which was in their brains, and with reasoning and inventiveness combined the gasoline engine to the wagon. In the fossil world, new species come across better than the first autos. In our world natural selection by buyers quickly demanded better products which rapidly appeared. So we see the steps in the modern world, but those steps are not present in the fossil world. Darwin's itty-bitty steps don't exist. It seems to me those speciation jumps had a great deal of guidance to explain them, i.e., the Cambrian explosion.-> dhw: my hypothesis does not avoid design. It proposes that evolutionary innovation is designed by an inventive mechanism in the genome, and it allows for that mechanism to have been designed by your God.-Which could then have included some instructions for future planning. I can see no other way for the mechanism to work, from the evidence we have from the gaps in the fossil record. For your approach to work, you have to make the assumption, per Darwin, that the gaps will be filled.