More Denton: Last essay of a 3 part series (Introduction)

by dhw, Sunday, July 19, 2015, 13:23 (3415 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: The leaps bother me and argue against common descent It is as if the inventive mechanism has guidance or pre-planning, which has been my constant comment.
dhw: If innovations work promptly - whether guided, preplanned, or invented from within - why should the leaps argue against common descent?
DAVID: The leaps that we see are large changes, and, yes, they obviously survived. But large changes, obvious to me and others thinking like me, require planning to work on arrival. You are suggesting a plethora of larger changes so the best ones could survive, resurrecting natural selection to a major role. -This is still not an argument against common descent. If you do believe in it, you will have to accept that ALL the changes, major and minor, took place within existing organisms. Natural selection is just another way of saying that beneficial changes survive, and is a red herring in this discussion. The choice lies between every innovation being preprogrammed in the first cells, God dabbling, random mutations, or an autonomous inventive mechanism within the cells themselves. -DAVID: This is a major shotgun arrangement, within the short time involved of six million years to get humans. Not a likely scenario, when the evidence of a planning center in cells is not presently known or likely to be discovered as in the immune system I brought up today.-In the post on the immune system you have, with customary honesty - and I cannot praise you too highly for this - offered evidence both against your “short time” argument and in favour of cellular intentionality: 
DAVID: Within germinal centers, B cells evolve in a Darwinian-like fashion. The gene responsible for producing their antibodies mutates rapidly, a million times faster than the normal rate of mutation in the human body, and the cells proliferate
Comment: This is the only example I know of that fits dhw's 'inventive mechanism' where cells can mutate at will for a specified purpose.-Thank you.-dhw: If the inventive mechanism guides the changes, what precedent tells you that 300,000 generations would not suffice? 
DAVID: Remember Lenski's work on E. coli, millions upon millions of generations and almost no changes. It takes several generations to fix a trait in humans, and that is the small stuff.-We know that bacteria have survived without change. They can hardly count as a precedent by which we can judge what time was needed by an autonomous inventive mechanism to produce humans.
 
DAVID: So now you are proposing teleological cells 'mentally' motivated to search. Cells are passive, actively responding to stimuli, not out searching.-That is what I have proposed all along. It is you who insist that cells/cell communities are passive (and confine your focus to their automatic functions), but many experts in the field disagree with you. Cells/cell communities are motivated to find means of survival, and my proposal is that the same ‘mental' motivation may have extended to the search for improvement.-dhw: Yes, the patterns are obvious. It is also obvious that if common descent is true, patterns would be handed down. That does not alter the possibility that your God designed the inventive mechanism, and the inventive mechanism designed the patterns.
DAVID: Thank you for recognizing the patterns, and partially accepting the idea that evolution might best work if guided.-I can certainly accept it. Once the mechanism for life and evolution came into existence (how it did so is the mystery), the guidance may have come from organisms looking for ways both to survive and to improve themselves.
 
dhw: ...perhaps you can tell me if he [Denton] ever talks of God preprogramming the first cells or dabbling with their make-up.
DAVID: Denton is an M.D. and does research in molecular biology. In Evolution; A Theory in Crisis >, 1985, he uses molecular evolutionary chemistry to tear Darwin apart [...]. In Nature's Destiny , 1998 , he takes the position that the universe is designed for humans, again with lots of chemical evidence... -But does he mention God preprogramming the first cells or dabbling?-dhw: I am far from convinced that this universe began 13.8 billion years ago. Even if the big bang theory is true, we have no idea what preceded it, and it could just as well have been an event within an existing, eternal and infinite universe. Eternity and infinity offer the same opportunities as a multiverse. The alternative is: “Either there is a God or there is no God.”-DAVID: That is why Einstein didn't want to give up an eternal universe, but your objection to the Big Bang, is that it must have come from an eternal something. I agree and it appears that this universe had a beginning. From there our reasoning diverges. There is a God.-I am delighted to be bracketed with Einstein! As regards a beginning, appearances can deceive. But our reasoning only diverges fifty per cent: maybe there is a God, and maybe there isn't.