Evolution v Creationism: guided evolution? dhw? (Evolution)

by dhw, Wednesday, April 15, 2015, 10:06 (3509 days ago) @ David Turell

The main thrust of this debate is repeated under “Origin of Language”, so I am going to summarize the whole discussion from my point of view, rather than answer each point separately.
 
I agree that our organs function automatically. The hypothesis of the intelligent cell is that it is capable of invention, but once an invention functions (i.e. a cell community has reorganized itself), it automatically repeats itself. This process is clearly to be seen in adaptation: an organism (community of cell communities) will remain the same until conditions demand a change, and then the cell communities cooperate intelligently to make the necessary adjustments, so that the organism can survive as itself. (Some don't, and they perish.) In this context, you insist on sticking to what you know (automatic cell behaviour), whereas I am offering an explanation for innovation through what is not known, namely the capacity of cells/cell communities to invent as well as to adapt. You only seem willing to hypothesize about the unknown if you can call it God.
 
The argument that cells are capable of thought, which underlies my IM hypothesis, has been supported by many researchers in the field, but you do not accept their findings. For your alternatives, please see “Origin of Language”. An autonomous mechanism (whether invented by God or not) would explain the haphazard history of evolution as well as the jumps, since non-functioning innovations would not survive. However, you believe God either preprogrammed or guided evolution (dabbled) through every innovation from bacteria to humans, who were his purpose for starting life in the first place. This does not allow for haphazardness.
 
We have reached a dead end, as you have made it clear that even a God-designed autonomous inventive mechanism is out of the question for you. However, you have acknowledged in the past that no-one can tell the difference between automatic responses and autonomous, intelligent responses. So long as there are scientists who argue in favour of sentient, cognitive, decision-making cells/cell communities, and no satisfactory solution has been found to the mystery of innovation, my hypothesis has to remain a possibility.