More about how evolution works: look at the video (Evolution)

by dhw, Tuesday, October 27, 2015, 15:55 (3313 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: The context for this remark was the intelligence of cells, which you reject, opting instead for what you call “intelligent information”. This nebulous term is used to cover the claim that every single innovation, complex lifestyle and natural wonder was preprogrammed 3.8 billion years ago or is the result of God's direct intervention - a theory even you admit is not accepted by most of your fellow ID-ers. That is why I regard the term as an obfuscation, and it has nothing to do with the argument for DNA being created by an intelligence.-DAVID: If "DNA is created by intelligence' then it contains intelligent information, that is the contention we agree in the argument.-Then let's play the “intelligent information” game to its logical conclusion. By analogy with intelligent design, I assume you mean usable information produced by an intelligent mind. This tells us that if an intelligent mind created DNA, then whatever is contained within DNA was created by an intelligent mind, which doesn't get us very far. In the context of this thread, how does evolution work? Hypothesis 1): intelligence created the cell, which contains a 3.8-billion-year programme created by intelligence and requiring and containing masses of intelligent information. Hypothesis 2): Intelligence created the cell (theistic version), which contains an intelligent mind created by intelligence and requiring and containing masses of intelligent information. "Intelligent information" is therefore not an alternative to cellular intelligence, but is a nebulous concept that can be applied to both hypotheses. So why don't we both just say what we mean: you a 3.8-billion-year programme, and me cellular intelligence? -DAVID: The argument is simply that DNA as a code contains information producing a very complex system, life, which cannot have arisen by chance. The source must be intelligence. For your theory, the original cells developed their own intelligence by some nebulous process. My theory at least accepts what we can see and reasons from that.-I have understood the argument, and accept that chance is a highly improbable source of the system. That still doesn't make the term “intelligent information” any more helpful. As for the two theories, what we see is a complex system, and my hypothesis is based on a process that is no more nebulous than the hypothesis that some unknown sourceless intelligence created it.