DILEMMAS: A Response to DHW (Evolution)

by David Turell , Monday, November 10, 2014, 15:24 (3664 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: You say the genome runs as a computer programme, and it (creates life and) runs its programmes. So where did “its programmes” come from? Are you saying God preprogrammed the genome to invent its own programmes?-That is possible, but I don't know. There is a simpler answer below. -> dhw: Or are you saying God preprogrammed the genome of the first cells to pass on and run a few zillion programmes he himself had inserted into them?-Also possible, but simpler answer below.-> dhw: You can still have your design, but do you think scientists are more likely to discover the programme for implementing a zillion monarch-like preprogrammed programmes, or a mechanism capable of creating its own programmes?-Answer: Computer programs that write programs exist. Programmers exist. History fits my answer: The computers of the 1980's were filled with childs-play programs compared to today. Note Tony's description of whole teams of programs cooperating with each other. DNA with 3+ billion bases, a quaternary coding system, now noted to be 80% functional is making human beings with 20,000+ genes and layers of controls. Imagine God as a programmer, for His reasons (unknown to us)starting life from rocks and water with a complex code, and using the evolutionary process to advance life from wiggly single cells to our complexity, by introducing master programs on top of previously master programs. As I solidify my thinking, and Tony has helped (thank you Tony), I think dabbling may be a major consideration. I believe in the concept of theistic evolution, which means guided evolution, which means introducing new DNA programs, which means current human DNA is an evolved coding molecule.-Your last question above typically leaves out God, the dabbler. As for the monarch, its DNA is sequenced, but so far no one knows how it causes metamorphosis, no less than its GPS guidance system for migration. When the 'how' is delineated (if ever) the complexity will demand a recognition of purposeful design.-Wolfgang Pauli on Darwin:-“In discussions with biologists I met large difficulties when they apply the concept of ‘natural selection' in a rather wide field, without being able to estimate the probability of the occurrence in a empirically given time of just those events, which have been important for the biological evolution. Treating the empirical time scale of the evolution theoretically as infinity they have then an easy game, apparently to avoid the concept of purposiveness. While they pretend to stay in this way completely ‘scientific' and ‘rational,' they become actually very irrational, particularly because they use the word ‘chance', not any longer combined with estimations of a mathematically defined probability, in its application to very rare single events more or less synonymous with the old word ‘miracle.'” (pp. 27-28)-http://www.igpp.de/english/tda/pdf/paulijcs8.pdf-Matt's comments would be interesting.