horizontal gene transfer: the real IM? (Introduction)

by dhw, Wednesday, December 17, 2014, 19:13 (3629 days ago) @ David Turell

The first exchanges come under “Negative atheism?” but I am combining them here, as the discussion is more relevant to the inventive mechanism.-dhw: And how does a blob of eternal energy acquire a planning consciousness? -DAVID: Because the eternal energy has always been conscious. For a proper first cause to have the potential to create complexity it has to have always been that way.
dhw: I find that just as difficult to imagine as consciousness evolving through ever changing matter, which would also produce the attributes we see.
DAVID: So do I.-And so there is no “has to have been”. Inexplicable, causeless eternal consciousness is no more imaginable (and in my view no more likely) than inexplicable evolving consciousness. It's a matter of faith, not logic.-dhw: As far as planning is concerned, I have explained many times that it would come from within countless, ever evolving intelligences working together.
DAVID: Where do your intelligences come from? Do they plan as a committee? Or could they be different aspects of one universal intelligence, which panpsychism might represent.-Horizontal gene transfer is a clear example of what I have called intelligent cooperation between cells. No need for anthropomorphic committee meetings. I do not know where the intelligences came from initially, but they might be different aspects of a single intelligence (most panpsychist theories are theistic). That makes no difference to the inventive mechanism hypothesis I offer as an alternative to your theory that 3.7 billion years ago your God preprogrammed the first cells with every innovation from bacteria to humans.
 
The article showed that some experiments worked and others didn't, “which suggests higgledy-piggledy, balanced or unbalanced D-I-Y by the genes themselves rather than the anthropocentric “advanced planning” so dear to your heart.”
DAVID: H-P [higgledy-piggledy] is required.
dhw: Which is like saying that if you plan to make an omelette, you must make a Yorkshire pudding, a shepherd's pie, and a cheesecake as well. (And then throw them away.)
DAVID: Anthropomorphic reasoning. We are discussing evolving life, a marked level above acting as a chef.-So we'll drop the image. God's purpose was to make humans, and in order to do so he was apparently required to make trilobites and dinosaurs and millions of other diddly-squats which then went extinct. I don't buy it, and it would seem that there has also been a subtle shift now in your own reasoningAVID: the whole arrangement can have come from God's planning.
dhw: Yes, indeed. Your God could have planned a mechanism that would autonomously and with unbridled zeal create its own combinations (some successful, some unsuccessful).
DAVID: Thank you. That is my concept.-My thanks go to you. After months of insisting that God had preplanned everything, and cells were mere automatons obeying his instructions (though perhaps with the ability to make minor adaptations of their own), you now appear to accept the possible autonomy of the inventive mechanism. I do not ask for more.-dhw: Your first cause, eternally conscious energy is just a proposal, without any basis in study. And cells that appear to act intelligently may be intelligent, and perhaps their intelligence was designed to act autonomously.
DAVID: All true. It is a logical proposal based on the resultant reality we see. The genome, designed with intelligent planning will then act intelligently.-I have at all times made the concession that the cells' intelligence MAY have been designed by your God. Since you now accept the possible autonomy of cellular (genomic) intelligence, we are in agreement at last.-**********-I shall need time to digest the new posts from yourself and Tony, whose return I greet with great pleasure.