An inventive mechanism: role of horizontal gene transfer (Evolution)

by dhw, Monday, December 01, 2014, 17:28 (3643 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: I'm not going to quote your comments. I went back and looked at the entire essay. There are quotes that fit both sides of our issues. The essay reads like Nagel's Mind and Cosmos. Nagel doesn't understand where consciousness came from and wants a 'third way' theory so as not to have to espouse Theism. Talbott's essay is the same sort of philosophic ruminating. He starts with Dawkins and Dennett and poo-poos both of them for a form of mechanistic reductionism that doesn't define what we see in life. In so doing he raised many points that fit my thinking and many points that fit your thinking. Both he an Nagel walk a thought tightrope so as not to fall on either side of the debate. They both remind me of your thinking. To me it is cut and dried that there must be a God. I see only chance or design, as alternatives. I see only design as possible. It is interesting that I found Talbott through the Uncommon Descent website, which is the main ID website. They have reacted like I have. I can see why.-But our subject is NOT chance v. design. I began my post by asking you to bear in mind that “our subject is whether or not evolution is driven by an autonomous inventive mechanism within the cell...” and over and over again I have emphasized that the IM does not preclude design. Of course Talbott's attack on randomness can be used to support theism and design (though in his case not theistic design), and my own IM hypothesis also supports design (though different from yours) and can be viewed theistically. I have drawn your attention to passages in which Talbott quite explicitly puts the case for the autonomous intelligence of the cell, which he links to the creation of new life forms. You, by contrast, maintain that the cell is an automaton, and although you have conceded that the genome may contain an inventive mechanism, you insist that it can't invent anything (it's only capable of minor adaptations). Your own hypothesis is that from the very beginning God preprogrammed all the innovations and complex lifestyles that have punctuated evolution from bacteria to humans. THAT is our subject. So please find me a reference in Talbott that supports your preprogramming hypothesis as opposed to my intelligent mechanism hypothesis. Bet you can't. See also my post under “Evidence for pattern development; mulling”, and mull some more.