More Denton: Reply to David (Introduction)

by David Turell , Thursday, July 30, 2015, 19:33 (3404 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: This sounds too good to be true. You have actually accepted my view: namely, it is possible (I stress that it's a hypothesis) that organisms have an inbuilt, autonomous, intelligent, inventive mechanism - or “onboard mechanism for planning” - which may have been provided by your God.-> 
> dhw: Back we go. We do not know how cells think.-If they do, which I doubt.- 
> dhw: Or as you so rightly imply in your first comment, the first DNA must contain a mechanism that will autonomously gather and process the information necessary to drive evolution from the simple start to the more complex.-Great. You accept it!
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> DAVID: That is what evolution has accomplished. Is that intelligence hiding in an undiscovered organelle in the cells we study or just part of the original DNA?
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> dhw: You can ask the same question about your undiscovered 3.8-billion-year computer programme containing all the innovations from bacteria to human. Where is it hiding?-As you just stated, in the genome DNA.
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> dhw: Nothing is too complex for the God you believe in. But you had asked “What is wrong with the simple concept of God guiding everything?” I was pointing out that the concept was anything but simple.-There are theologians who describe God as simple, you should remember.
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> dhw: I answered that in the comment below. We are not talking about experimentation over a long period of time. If the experiment doesn't work, the organism dies! (However, in my example the breathing mechanism must change immediately, whereas fins to legs could undergo refinements.)-In the Cambrian there are no refinements, just very now complex animals.
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> dhw: Why do you always go back to Darwin? We have long since agreed that on this point Darwin was wrong - hence the theory of punctuated equilibrium. The Cambrian was the biggest punctuation mark of all.-But how do you explain the punctuation in the Cambrian, except as above, as you stated, hidden in the original DNA?