A new synthesis: Four dimensions of Evolution (Evolution)

by dhw, Friday, December 11, 2015, 20:47 (3268 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: Of course first life had to contain the mechanism for evolution, but I was responding to your claim that if that mechanism was designed, design ruled evolution. 
DAVID: Makes perfect sense to me. If life took design to begin, my position, then design set up the mechanism for evolution. You are skipping the consideration of design.-Complete misunderstanding. For the sake of argument, I have accepted that design set up the mechanism for evolution. But that does not mean the mechanism preprogrammed the course of evolution. Your God could have designed it to do its own thing.-DAVID: But that hypothesis leaves out a drive for humans; they then are an accident of chance, a la Gould.-Of course it leaves out a drive for humans. That is the issue we are debating: your belief that your God geared evolution to the production of humans. I am offering you divinely inspired alternatives: 1) God says, “I wanner make life, and see what comes of it.” The mechanism runs free. 2) Same as 1) but as things develop, God says: “Hey, let's do a dabble here and invent humans (you can still have your special status). 3) God says: ”I wanner make humans, but I dunno how to do it.” (Special status, but the mechanism runs free, and God has a dabble here and there, like when humans turn out to be dinosaurs.) All three explain the higgledy-piggledy bush, and even 1) is designed by the mechanism, but humans are not your God's purpose.-DAVID: I don't need him [Darwin] at all. For him humans are a chance result.-Random mutations within God's mechanism are just another example of divine design without humans as the purpose of every phase (as in 1)). I realize that you don't “need” any alternative. Nobody ”needs” alternatives when they've made up their minds. Richard Dawkins might say the same. But some of us are still testing the various alternatives, to see what makes sense.-DAVID: Shall we now rate 'farfetchedness? Tell me where does 'autonomous intelligence' come from? Not from the initial rocky earth as in your Bbella discussions. Does your form of auto-intelligence arise de novo? The philosophic issue really is can intelligence arise when none existed before in an inorganic universe?-“Where does autonomous intelligence come from?” is one of the great unanswered and unanswerable questions. Your answer is all earthly life and intelligence comes from another form of intelligence which didn't come from anywhere but simply IS. And you mutter “first cause”, as if that explained everything. Since the only intelligence we know is associated with materials, the claim that “first cause” is intelligent is no more credible than the claim that intelligence can arise “de novo” through a particular combination of materials. Of course it's far-fetched. If there was a convincing explanation, we wouldn't have the problem. -DAVID: According to Haisch, who uses quantum examples, he states consciousness is the basis of reality. I've read his book. Watch his video. It is only 30 minutes, 40 with the questions discussion. His reasoning and the many quantum theorists who support him, is why I stress so much quantum mechanics in my entries.-I found an interview on a rather dull programme called The Moore Show. I can see why you like him, and there was one intriguing idea that God's purpose is to know himself through us. Maybe his book explains what he means. If “many” quantum theorists support him, that can only mean that some do not, and so it would be difficult for a non-quantum-theorist to take sides.
(I see you've now given a link to the video. I'll try to catch up over the weekend.)