DILEMMAS (Evolution)

by dhw, Tuesday, October 28, 2014, 20:21 (3677 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: We are not at an impasse at all. “The information to design systems” is a million miles away from preprogramming the first cells with every innovation there ever was. If you expand the expression slightly and call it “the information that gives an organism the ability to design systems”, you have another expression for an inventive mechanism. This will use its in-built (or if you like, God-given) information to process the information that comes from outside and produce its inventions accordingly. -DAVID: This is where we part ways in the understanding of 'information'. The information that produces major advances is either pre-programmed from the beginning, to which I think you agree, but the 'information' used by an IM is only somewhat 'from outside' as a definition of the challenges to be met, but is also instructional information or guidelines within the IM, that have had to be implanted in the IM from the very beginning of life. You keep suggesting that IM information is all new and up to date at the time for the necessary changes in organisms, and I view this as nothing further from the truth of the issue. The instructional information in the IM comes from the very beginning of life.-Perhaps it would help if you explained precisely what you mean by the word “information”. As I understand it, there are two sorts involved here: 1) the information already inherent in the organism itself: i.e. all those processes that enable an organism to live and to “think”; 2) the information which comes from outside the organism and which it has to process through its “thinking”. In human terms, this is the equivalent of the senses and the brain registering and processing phenomena from the world around us. I am suggesting that 1) has to be present from the start, but has undergone continual complexification throughout evolution, with the result that single sentient, “thinking” cells have combined into the hugely complex “thinking” organisms we know today. In the theistic scenario I have proposed, God created the sentient, “thinking” cell with which life and evolution began (info type 1)), and intervened to produce the major advances, or what you call the “patterns” (still type 1)). The “thinking” part of the cell/cell community, its brain or genome, has created the vast range of variations that arise from interaction with the needs or opportunities arising out of a changing environment (info type 2)). For instance, God may have organized the first light-sensitive cells, but different organisms worked autonomously on his basic plan to produce the various forms of eyes that would best advance their own individual relationship with their environment.
 
dhw: Theistic evolution is not a refutation of Darwin. 
DAVID: Yes it is. For Darwin evolution was a chance naturalistic mechanism. Theistic means God-guided evolution, under His total control.-If it was under his total control, he must have preprogrammed or specifically created every single form of life and every single “Nature's Wonder",even though apparently his purpose was to produce humans! Previously you have conceded that the inventive mechanism could produce minor variations, but now God is guiding those too, since you “totally reject chance” and evolution is under “His total control”. (From his standpoint, anything beyond his control would have to be left to chance.) No wonder you have a dilemma trying to “reconcile the bush” with your anthropocentric purpose. Furthermore, variations and innovations are very likely to have been triggered by environmental changes (as we see with adaptation), and so those environmental changes must also be under God's total control. Every form of life is God's puppet if you allow ANY degree of autonomy or chance, as it would mean God loses total control. The word “theistic” does not mean under God's total control. Nor does it mean with the purpose of producing humans. It is perfectly possible for God to have deliberately created a process that runs independently of his control. As someone who believes in free will, you can hardly argue with that. -Dhw: ....adaptation in itself is hugely complex, and denotes awareness and great technical skill to be employed by the “brain” in the genome. So maybe that brain is capable of more than adaptation.
DAVID: I won't accept that, as noted above.-Yesterday you accepted it as being “certainly possible.” And when we talked of the “layer of gene function we know nothing about”, you conceded that “If we find a missing layer it may be capable of complex innovation.” All of these hypotheses are maybes. Fair enough to express doubt (“Not found yet and what adaptive capability we have found so far looks too weak to do that”), but if on Sunday you concede that my hypothesis is certainly possible, why do you then refuse to accept the same “maybe” on Monday?