Introducing James Barham (Introduction)

by dhw, Tuesday, August 18, 2015, 12:42 (3384 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: He is a philosopher of science mentioned in my last book. In this first essay he introduced and discusses the intelligent agency of life:-http://jamesabarham.com/my-blog/33-seeing-past-darwin-i-Thank you yet again, not only for a very stimulating article, but also for your openness in drawing attention to certain ideas that directly contradict your own. You will of course have your personal slant on all this, but I shall select the sections that particularly interest me. I am going to juxtapose quotes for the sake of clarity: -“The official explanation of the nature of living things---and therefore of human beings---that we've all been led to believe in for the past 60 or 70 years turns out to be dead wrong in some essential respects.
What have we been so wrong about? It's complicated, but in a phrase, it's this:
The machine metaphor was a mistake---organisms are not machines, they are intelligent agents.” 
“Finally, we now know that living systems are autonomous agents, capable of highly flexible intelligent behavior. For example, even the simplest, single-celled organisms, such as bacteria, are able to adjust themselves to altered circumstances in a purposeful way. And they can do this even if the circumstances are unlike any ever encountered by their ancestors during their evolutionary history.”-This is a key element of my own hypothesis, as opposed to your insistence, David, that bacteria are automatons merely obeying God's instructions. Barham seems to take it for granted that you are wrong.
 
“We are finally beginning to realize, on the basis of irrefutable empirical evidence, as well as more careful analysis of Darwinian theory itself, that purposeful action in living things is an objectively real phenomenon that is presupposed, not explained, by the theory of natural selection.”-As all of us on this website have constantly reiterated, natural selection can only select from that which already exists. It does not produce anything. However, Darwin's theory does entail purpose: that of survival, which is as objectively real as a purpose can get. It does not, however, entail a divine purpose for creation. I would like to add improvement to survival, which takes us firmly into Darwinian territory, but without the random mutations and the gradualism which are key elements for him but which we have long since agreed are highly suspect. Instead we have intelligent, autonomous beings (Barham's “simplest, single-celled organisms”) purposefully cooperating in order to produce increasing complexity. Natural selection ensures that efficient combinations and processes survive and are passed on. Darwin concludes: “from so simple a beginning endless forms have been, and are being, evolved.” In my edition he even talks of life “having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or one”. Is there anything there for a theistic evolutionist to object to?-“How did those incredibly complicated systems imbued with purpose through and through, which we call "cells," come to be in the first place? Nobody has a clue.”-Darwin's concern was with Chapter 2 of life, not Chapter 1: “How a nerve comes to be sensitive to light, hardly concerns us more than how life itself originated.” (Difficulties on Theory). Barham is right, nobody has a clue. Neither theist nor atheist. So each comes up with his own speculative hypotheses.
 
It will be interesting to see the continuation of this essay, especially as he intends to cover the work of James A. Shapiro, a dedicated believer in the autonomous intelligence of bacteria. Thank you again, David. 
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I drafted this last night, but I see you have already posted the second part. I'll try to read it and comment tomorrow.