cellular intelligence; information controls (Evolution)

by David Turell , Thursday, May 30, 2019, 15:31 (2002 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: All I have agreed to is all current scientists know is cellular responses to stimuli can be interpreted as intelligent results. No one knows how that is achieved.

dhw: Indeed, just as no one knows how speciation is achieved. You have not responded to the point that innovations require restructuring of cell communities, whether God did it or not. And so we are left with the fact that you disagree with those scientists who believe cells are intelligent, and you categorically reject as a pipe dream the hypothesis that this (perhaps God-given) intelligence might possibly extend to innovation.

No need to respond: It is obvious that groups of cells are modified in speciation. and yes, pipe dream.

dhw: I doubt if many scientists would regard it as more of a pipe dream than the hypothesis that an unknown power provided the first cells with a computer programme for every innovation, or alternatively popped in to perform operations on various organisms to prepare them for events over which – in your latest hypothesis concerning local environmental changes – he had no control.

DAVID: No one knows how life got a start. We all have our own hypotheses.
Indeed, and no one knows how speciation happens, but any hypothesis other than your own is apparently a pipe dream.

DAVID: As an agnostic you may want to skip over God's role, but I consider Him as an answer to the unanswered questions.

dhw: The question we are dealing with here is speciation. “God” is not an answer if you propose that your God preprogrammed or dabbled it all, and I propose that your God designed an autonomous mechanism. You repeatedly try to make out that my agnosticism invalidates any criticism of your highly subjective view of your God’s purposes and methods. Sorry, but that is a total cop-out.

DAVID: Of course God is an answer just as you describe my thoughts. I agree that God might have designed a semi-autonomous design mechanism, but you view God as wishy-washy in control of evolution, and i view Him in firm control.

dhw: Semi-autonomous is meaningless.

Semi-autonomous applies only to the mechanism you imagine God might have given to organisms so they can speciate.

dhw: Either he did or he didn’t preprogramme or dabble every design. There is nothing “wishy-washy” about a God who decides to create an autonomous mechanism that takes its own decisions – or are you now telling us that your God is wishy-washy because he gave humans free will?

Comment is totally off the point I made and further explained above. I view God as maintaining tight control of evolution. You, obviously, do not.

dhw: Your “firm control” contradicts your belief that the only thing he wanted to design was H. sapiens, but for some unknown reason he proceeded to design 3.5+ billion years’ worth of non-human life forms. Furthermore, you have recently decided that he did NOT control local environmental changes, which means he did not control the very thing which his innovations were designed in advance to cope with! A weird kind of "firm control".

You make a constant note that species come and go. Succumbing to environmental changes is part of the pattern of evolution. Your comment is way off point. God does not offer any plan to maintain all species forever, which is the implication!