Epigenetics: through phenotype changes? (Introduction)

by dhw, Saturday, January 17, 2015, 14:01 (3599 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: As always you scurry back to chance v. design and gloss over the issue of the inventive mechanism, which is the point of this particular post on this particular thread. ... My point here, to put it as succinctly as possible, is that an inventive/self-improvement mechanism which doesn't invent/self-improve is not an inventive/self-improvement mechanism. So, to take just one example in conjunction with my post under “Animal Language”, do you still categorically exclude the possibility that the first generation(s) of weaverbirds designed their own nests?
-DAVID: As I have said before, we do not understand the origin of instinctual behavior. What the weaverbirds do now is instinct within their DNA. They didn't design the complex nest we see now all at once. Did they design it gradually over many generations? I don't know. I think they contributed but were helped by a design plan. For me this issue doesn't settle the major of chance or design.-It can't (nothing can), and it's not meant to do so. I'm trying to pin you down on the issue of how you think evolution works, and I'm using the weaverbird's nest as a test case. For the sake of argument, I continue to wear my theist hat, and offer these theistic choices: 1) God preprogrammed the first cells to pass on the design of the weaverbird's nest; 2) God dabbled to design the nest; 3) God provided the first cells with an inheritable, autonomous, intelligent, inventive mechanism which enabled the weaverbird to design its nest for itself. If you think any of these three hypotheses could be combined, please tell me how. If you can't, it's either 1, 2 or 3, so please tell me which you think is most likely.