Review of Spetner's book (Introduction)

by David Turell , Tuesday, November 25, 2014, 00:19 (3651 days ago) @ dhw


> DAVID: How does one hypothesize without a degree of imagination, once chance is removed from consideration?
> 
> dhw: One doesn't. But one does not imagine that one's knowledge is such that one can dismiss a hypothesis just because it might conflict with one's preconceptions (e.g. that God planned every innovation in advance).-You have side-slipped my point: philosophically there are three ways to explain evolution: chance, requirement under laws of nature, and design. Chance is rejected by both of us; natural law requirements is unreasonable; only design is left to turn to, as far as I am concerned. What can you turn to: the picket fence, the non-answer. your choice. 
> 
> dhw: That is why I have constantly stressed that the first cells must have contained the mechanisms for life, reproduction and evolution. How they got there is one question. How they work is another.-Agreed. Wagner describes controlling networks of genes, but has no idea how they accomplish their tasks of creating an animal. No one does. We are at a very early stage of knowledge.-> 
> dhw: The theistic version of my hypothesis is that God designed the inventive mechanism and gave it autonomy to do its own inventing, though leaving him free to dabble if and when he wished. How does that avoid considering God in any meaningful way? I do not close out any possibilities.-I agree that your all-inclusive theistic theory is almost reasonable. What I also know is that cells and organisms work at a molecular signaling level. They do not have actual consciousness to invent complex life patterns. Those basic patterns came from the original genomes.-> dhw: you are desperate to exclude an autonomous inventive mechanism because you think it would conflict with your belief that God preprogrammed all evolutionary innovations 3.7 billion years ago in order to produce humans. Do you really find one hypothesis more "scientific", more "reasonable" than the other?-I exclude it for the reasons given. I don't see how an IM is conscious enough to do that type of planning. At least you seem to have stopped implying that 'sentient cells' are consciously brilliant enough to create all of their own evolution, or is that still your thought?