The simplest explanation? (Evolution)

by dhw, Sunday, November 01, 2020, 11:17 (1481 days ago) @ George Jelliss

dhw If you are prepared to reject random mutations as the cause of innovations, it would be interesting to know what you do regard as the mechanism that causes them.

GEORGE: I'm not prepared to reject random mutations as a cause of innovations. Darwin's basic theory of natural selection still stands. But it is enhanced by more recent discoveries.
This is the best account of the current situation that I've found on the web:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_evolutionary_thought

Thank you for this, George. David will be as disappointed at the absence of Behe as I am at the absence of Shapiro, and we will both be disappointed at the emphasis laid on natural selection (though I only skimmed, and maybe I missed something). The idea that natural selection is the key to the origin of species is frankly absurd. Natural selection does not create anything. It only works on what already exists. The key to evolution has to be whatever mechanism actually changes existing structures (i.e. causes the innovations that are the basis of new species). Natural selection then decides what changes will or won’t survive. Darwin was specific that the mechanism was random mutations, which entails chance events creating all the complexities that led from bacteria to the human brain.

My own take on this is that Shapiro’s theory of cellular intelligence as the mechanism is far more convincing. This theory, it should be stressed, is not religious. He leaves open the question of how the intelligent cell originated – just as the agnostic Darwin left open the question of the source of life.