David's theory of evolution: James A. Shapiro's view (Evolution)

by dhw, Tuesday, February 25, 2020, 10:18 (1731 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: It seems you've forgotten. In the past I have stated I base my theory on their [ID scientists’] scientific work which demands a designer. They do not get into God's methods of design

dhw: I had not forgotten. I merely wished to set the record straight. You obviously cannot name a single scientist who supports your theory of evolution.

DAVID: My theory is my version of ID, as theistic evolution. That herd of folks won't discuss how God does it.

You challenged me to name the “plenty of scientists” who supported cellular intelligence. I did so. I then challenged you to name any scientists who backed your theory of “theistic evolution”, and you cannot name a single one. I therefore suggest you drop that particular line of attack.

dhw: Nobody knows what controls the alterations to RNA as above, and nobody knows what controls those alterations to whole cell communities which lead to speciation. However, even you admit that cell communities have the ability to alter themselves slightly, so it is not unreasonable to propose that this ability may have extended to major alterations.

DAVID: That hope of yours is a major jump from all we know about current adaptations.

It is not a hope. It is a theory, but you obviously hope it is wrong since it would do away with your theory of a divine 3.8-billion-year-old computer programme for every single undabbled life form, econiche, strategy, lifestyle, bacterial response and natural wonder in the whole history of life, solely for the purpose of producing H. sapiens – a theory which, as far you know, is not shared by any scientist in the world.

dhw: […] If you are looking for the cause of speciation, you have latched onto the wrong process: it is not the carbon copies that reveal intelligence but the functioning changes to the automatic process – just as it is the invention of new strategies, the solving of new problems, and the adaptation to or exploitation of new conditions that reveal the intelligence that diverges from established patterns of behaviour.

DAVID: Even you admit my objection to this view of yours is real: From the outside, and we are outside, the cell acts intelligently so both of us can say the cell looks as if it is intelligent. But it may really be a response to intelligent instructions it has been given by a designer.

Yes, yes, autonomous intelligence is the 50/50 possibility which you have acknowledged all the way along but which you interpret as 100% impossibility.

DAVID: I chose by my studies of biochemistry to stay with a designer. It cannot happen by chance.

Please don’t change the subject. I have acknowledged all the way along that the intelligent cell may have been the invention of your God. It is not a denial of the case for a designer.

DAVID: All you can do is conjure up a weak humanized God who gives the organisms the right to evolve themselves, which proves you have to recognize God by a back door to get around the problem of where did the intelligence come from.

There is no back door, and there is no “weak humanized God”. Concepts of God have nothing to do with the question of whether or not he preprogrammed/dabbled the whole of life’s history, or set it in motion by inventing cellular intelligence. Why do you regard the latter as a sign of weakness? What is weak about the creation of a mechanism that yields the astonishing and ever changing bush of life? A control freak is no less “humanized” than a God who allows evolution to run its own course (though always with the option of dabbling).