Evolution took a long time (Introduction)

by dhw, Saturday, December 31, 2016, 12:47 (2884 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: A few days ago, however, you actually condemned my hypothesis as illogical and atheistic, and out of the blue introduced the atheistic argument that the human retina is illogical.
DAVID: We have just so much evidence from the studies of evolution and the resultant bush of life. What is apparent is that even a single living cell is highly complex. It is not logical that it developed from a series of contingent chance events. What is left in design. Logically where does complex design come from? Mental planning. That is what the retina represents. What the retina argument implies is that it is not rational to deny design created life. What it all goes back to is first cause which has to be a designer. The atheists admit life looks completely like it was designed, but there cannot be a designer according to their beliefs. There are only two choices, chance or design. There is no third way.

An excellent summary of the case for design, and a major reason why I am not an atheist. However, if your God endowed living cells with intelligence, as some scientists claim, and if this intelligence enabled cells/cell communities to do their own designing, we have a logical, theistic explanation for the history of life as we know it. The fact that you reject the hypothesis does not make it illogical or atheistic, which was the point I objected to.

DAVID: A semi-autonomous inventive mechanism for complex advances may exist, but it is highly theoretical, with no evidentiary support.
dhw: …the hypothesis that your God personally designed or preprogrammed the first cells with every innovation, lifestyle and natural wonder in life’s history is highly theoretical, with no evidentiary support.
DAVID: No direct evidence, only logic beyond a reasonable doubt.

What constitutes “reasonable” is subjective. You would say the same to Shapiro, who clearly considers cellular intelligence to be beyond any reasonable doubt (your scepticism being due to "large organisms chauvinism").

Dhw: How do organisms “freewheel” or try things on their own if they do not have a mechanism that enables them to “freewheel” or try things on their own?
DAVID: But I have suggested that they might have an epigenetic free-wheeling mechanism. Something drives the increasing complexity we see in advancing evolving life.

No evolutionist would disagree that something drives the increasing complexity from single celled organisms such as bacteria to multicellular organisms such as the whale, the duckbilled platypus and ourselves. The whole discussion concerns the nature of the “something”. You insist that your so-called “freewheeling” mechanism is guided and God is always in control. That is not freewheeling. Either the mechanism can act independently or it can’t. “Epigenetic” simply relates to the interplay between genes and environment and tells us nothing about whether evolutionary advancement results from divine programming/dabbling or from an AUTONOMOUS/ ”freewheeling” inventive mechanism possibly designed by a possible God. The latter offers a perfectly logical explanation for the higgledy-piggledy history of life as we know it, and dispenses with reliance on chance factors other than those relating to environmental change. And it is not atheistic.