Innovation; Just for dhw (Introduction)

by dhw, Sunday, December 20, 2015, 18:37 (3262 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: I am an agnostic, and have repeated a thousand times that your God may have invented the mechanism. The dispute is over how evolution works, and my hypothesis is an alternative to your divine 3.8-billion-year-old computer programme to explain every innovation from the year dot.
DAVID: Our difference is I assume intelligence is eternal and always existed in/as God. You can't/won't do that. Intelligence CANNOT appear from inorganic matter as life starts, and initial life needs intelligent instructions/information.-As usual, you return to the origin of life and intelligence, ignoring the very words you quote: “...your God may have invented the mechanism. The dispute is over how evolution works...” -Dhw: Perhaps you cannot even contemplate this hypothesis because it would undermine your personal reading of your God's mind and purpose. 
DAVID: I've agreed He can give them the ability to make 'evolutionary decisions', only I add some guideline limits in order to be sure humans arrive. You don't like that limitation. Under your system it should advance helter-skelter and it is possible humans might never arrive. I think the advances of evolution are directed toward us as the definite endpoint.-Decision-making entails intelligence (See Shapiro under ”The biochemistry of cell adhesion...”). We have agreed on your “guideline limits”: natural and environmental restrictions, and patterns (which are explained by common descent), but not that these are imposed to make sure humans arrive (however, see below regarding my hypothesis 3). My ”system” does not say evolution “should” advance helter-skelter (or higgledy-piggledy); it is based on the observation that evolution HAS advanced that way, as you finally admit under “Red Deer Cave people”:-“The Cambrian was a shotgun mechanism going off in all directions and produced the helter-skelter bush of animal life.”-I could hardly have expressed it better myself. You have consistently claimed all the innovations, lifestyles and wonders were preprogrammed or directly invented by your God for the sake of humans. The “helter-skelter” bush of animal life can hardly be called “guided”, and therefore entails sheer chance (which we both reject) or autonomous, inventive intelligence.
 
DAVID (same post): “This raises a consideration you will accept: perhaps God had an endpoint in humans, but had to develop it through evolutionary experimentation since he is a 'process type' of God, not as totally all-powerful as religions like to represent. ” -Thank you for offering me my own hypothesis 3), which I offered to you in my post of 11 December under “A new synthesis”: “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.)” Your response to this on 12 December was: ”I assume, if God is guiding evolution, He knows everything.” It's good to see that you are now prepared to reconsider your assumptions.