QUOTE: "Being an evolutionist means there is no bad news.”
dhw: Being a theist means there is no bad news. Whatever happens happens because that is the way God wants it to happen. The God theory cannot be falsified.
Three points to be made here: 1) Hunter’s attack on the theory of evolution can be applied equally to the theory of God. “Sauce for the goose and the gander.” 2) We still talk of the “theory” of evolution, and I myself believe in it. I would never claim that it is “scientifically” true. (NB: Please remember the theory itself is not atheistic.) 3) Most important of all, I do not believe that science provides the only avenue to truth (whatever “truth” may be), and so in my own subjective quest for that truth, falsifiability as a criterion is actually irrelevant. The question is always "Can/Do I believe it?", not "Can it be falsified?"

DAVID: Falsifiability applies only to proposed scientific theory about a specific process or event, not an attempt at belief. Science can be used in the search for religious belief.

There is no disagreement here. My point is that falsifiability (not science!) is irrelevant to my quest for truth. Nobody “knows” the truth, and so we can only end up with belief, whether it emerges from science, psychic experiences, philosophy, religion, upbringing… whatever.

TONY: Science is supposed to be an objective, observable, testable process for learning concrete facts about the natural world. For science, belief is irrelevent, as is faith, and it cannot be used to study God, only his works. Both religion and science are avenues for understanding, but it IS important not to let them stray from their paths or the each lose the very thing that makes the wonderful.

Again I agree, but I think what David meant was that you can use science to find evidence that God exists. Whether someone believes the conclusions drawn from that evidence is another matter.

David:

Comment: If the Royal Society had no tentative answers and my bolded statement is noted, all that is left of the theory is common descent. Not much of a theory.

"James Shapiro’s talk, clearly one of the most interesting of the conference, highlighted this difficulty in its most fundamental form. Shapiro presented fascinating evidence showing, contra neo-Darwinism, the non-random nature of many mutational processes – processes that allow organisms to respond to various environmental challenges or stresses. The evidence he presented suggests that many organisms possess a kind of pre-programmed adaptive capacity – a capacity that Shapiro has elsewhere described as operating under “algorithmic control.” Yet, neither Shapiro, nor anyone else at the conference, attempted to explain how the information inherent in such algorithmic control or pre-programmed capacity might have originated."

Tony: Comment: What I have always asserted: Variation within tightly controlled pre-defined constraints.

My point all along about bacteria. Algorithmic control and pre-programming fit exactly. Information running the show but no innate intelligence.

QUOTE: In other words, the neo-Darwinian mechanism of mutation and natural selection lacks the creative power to generate the novel anatomical traits and forms of life that have arisen during the history of life. Yet, as Müller noted, neo-Darwinian theory continues to be presented to the public via textbooks as the canonical understanding of how new living forms arose — reflecting precisely the tension between the perceived, and actual, status of the theory. (David’s bold)
DAVID’s comment: If the Royal Society had no tentative answers and my bolded statement is noted, all that is left of the theory is common descent. Not much of a theory.

They are simply saying what we have both said over and over again, that the problem is innovation. Common descent is a tremendous theory which many of us now take for granted (Tony opposes it), and it caused a furore at the time because it contradicted the established view of separate creation. Although Darwin was far from being the originator of the theory, it was he who persuaded the world to accept it (while insisting that it did not preclude the existence of God). He himself regarded his book as a starting-point, not a conclusion, and how very right he was.

TONY: Common descent is actually inclusive in this issue. Having 'no theory of the generative' means that common descent stands no chance at all of having happened because 'new' features or traits have no means of occurring and causing speciation.

Again, innovation is indeed the great problem. David’s theory that his God preprogrammed the new features or intervened to “dabble” is perfectly in line with common descent, because in all cases the changes would have taken place in existing organisms. My own hypothesis of cell communities using their (perhaps God-given) intelligence to cooperate in producing new features also explains how common descent might work.

QUOTE: "James Shapiro’s talk, clearly one of the most interesting of the conference, highlighted this difficulty in its most fundamental form. Shapiro presented fascinating evidence showing, contra neo-Darwinism, the non-random nature of many mutational processes – processes that allow organisms to respond to various environmental challenges or stresses. The evidence he presented suggests that many organisms possess a kind of pre-programmed adaptive capacity – a capacity that Shapiro has elsewhere described as operating under “algorithmic control.” Yet, neither Shapiro, nor anyone else at the conference, attempted to explain how the information inherent in such algorithmic control or pre-programmed capacity might have originated."

dhw: Shapiro is a champion of cellular intelligence, and so I don’t know why he doesn’t go the whole hog and offer it as an explanation for innovation. Perhaps, though, it’s a bit too radical to present to the Royal Society, and it would probably be far too radical for them to countenance anyone allowing for the existence of God as the possible originator of cellular intelligence or a “pre-programmed capacity”.

Your paragraph above is an interesting and incorrect interpretation of the quote. What it states is Algorithmic control runs bacteria, and that is exactly my point about bacteria. They contain information to run the algorithms and are preprogrammed. They contain programs to turn on re-writes of their DNA ahd respond in that way.