Magic embryology:extensive programming on display (Introduction)

by dhw, Tuesday, January 23, 2018, 12:52 (2279 days ago) @ David Turell

Dhw: Since you yourself believe in common descent, I presume that what you endorse is the argument that the enormous changes cannot be the result of chance. I agree. You know my hypothesis (not dogma and not even belief, but an alternative to hypotheses such as Darwin’s random mutations and your own divine 3.8 billion-year-old computer programme or dabbling).

DAVID: But the other point of his article is how does evolution invent the new factory proceses to manufacture the latest phenotype in a series of new species. Looking at how humans do it, one designer presents a shape of the new Volkswagen, someone else designs the machines to stamp out the sheet steel or plastic. Another set of engineers design the advanced motor, and another group design the machines to make some of the new parts. In nature changes in DNA and other layers produce the new forms. You suggest cell committees contain the intellect to do this. I have never understood this wishful thinking. A designer is required, obviously.

I like the VW analogy. Any major change in an organism will require exactly the same cooperation between the different cell communities, whether your God preprogrammed/dabbled it, or they worked it out for themselves (with the intelligence that God may have given them). I don’t mind your little joke of always substituting “committees” for communities in order to conjure up an unlikely human image, but I will not let you get away with “wishful thinking”. I have nothing to gain from this hypothesis, which at all times allows for the existence of your God. I am simply looking for an explanation of how evolution works, and I find your own hypothesis as illogical as you do (since your ultimate argument seems to be that God’s logic must be different from ours). I am equally unconvinced by Darwin’s hypothesis of random mutations. The intelligent cell is not “wishful thinking” – my hypothesis grew from the findings of some eminent scientists, but I have always acknowledged that there is no evidence that cell communities are capable of the major changes required for speciation. There is no evidence for your divine preprogramming/dabbling hypothesis either. Nobody knows the truth, which is why we continue to look for it. Anyone who firmly believes in his/her hypothesis and rejects alternatives is, I think, far more open to the charge of “wishful thinking” than someone who offers his own as an alternative, and not as dogma or belief. But perhaps you didn’t read the lines at the head of this post.