Bacterial motors carefully studied (Introduction)

by dhw, Monday, April 04, 2016, 16:34 (2937 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: The real reason I edited your post is that you keep reverting to the 3.8 billion year programming as though I believe this thought. I don't. In the past, repeatedly, I have stated that I believe God guided evolution but I have no idea how He did it.
dhw: I am surprised but pleased to hear that you don't believe in your hypothesis of a 3.8-billion-year computer programme after all. But since you insist on God's “guidance”, even down to the building of the weaverbird's nest, this leaves you with nothing but divine dabbling (unless you can think of an alternative means of “guidance”) to account for every innovation, lifestyle and natural wonder.-DAVID: Again a misinterpretation of my thinking: the 3.8 billion year program and the dabble are two alternative ways God guided evolution. The key starting point of my reasoning is God invented and guided evolution. Since guidance is a key, an IM is guided also. I believe in guidance, method unknown.-It is your starting point of “guidance” that is the great divide between us, and the weaverbird is the example that epitomizes the gaps in your hypotheses: God had to “guide” the weaverbird - you don't know how - in order to “balance nature” - you don't know how - in order to produce or feed humans, but you can't explain the connection.-dhw: Why could he not have invented a mechanism to function without his guidance?

DAVID: He could have with all the guidance built in.-If you accept common descent, built-in guidance can only be your 3.8-billion-year computer programme or dabbling! You know very well that I am proposing a mechanism that works without guidance - i.e. an autonomous intelligence that makes its own decisions. You believe your God gave humans the intelligence to make their own decisions. So why could he not have done the same with other organisms? (Some scientists tell us they do have such intelligence, but you prefer to dismiss their findings.)
 
DAVID: Design involves visualizing the purpose in the present for the future. Bird brains can conceptualize? I see trial and error for those birds. If nests fossilized we might find a trail of changes.-Even humans have to combine conceptualization with trial and error when they create something new. Nobody knows to what extent other organisms have originally achieved their wonders in the same way.-dhw: My hypothesis actually allows for humans not being an accident, for their being a saltation (like every other innovation), for a God, and even for a God intervening. What it does not allow for is every innovation, lifestyle and natural wonder depending on God's guidance, and for his anthropocentric starting-point.-DAVID: So God intervenes on and off when He feels like it? If He bothered to start a universe and life, why wouldn't He have an intense continuous interest?-Perhaps because instead of starting out with the purpose of creating humans, he started out with the purpose of seeing what would happen if he set evolution in motion. You don't like to speculate on why he would have created humans, but whatever the reason, it can be applied to the rest of “creation”. Possibly as an entertainment to relieve his eternal boredom.