LUCA latest: Shapiro redux (Introduction)

by dhw, Tuesday, July 25, 2023, 09:05 (485 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: I faithfully presented Shapiro as an historical figure in the debate.

dhw: You faithfully quoted his exact summary of his theory, e.g. “evolutionary novelty arises from the production of new cell and multicellular structures as a result of cellular self-modification and cell fusions.” Stop pretending that I have “blown it up”.

DAVID: The issue is that Shapiro proposed the bacterial ability to edit their DNA might explain evolution! You morphed that into brilliant cell committees running evolution.

dhw: Please stop ignoring what Shapiro wrote. Read the above! It doesn’t say bacterial editing ability might explain evolution. It says cellular self-modification produces evolutionary novelty, and the rest of the summary you quote in your book lists all those qualities of cells which denote their intelligence.

DAVID: Yes, I quoted Shapiro's theory, pure theory! All we know currently for fact is bacteria edit DNA.

So will you please stop pretending that I have blown his theory up, and have morphed it into something he did not say. And stop ignoring the fact that over and over again I have agreed that it is a theory – just as your God’s existence and your interpretation of his purpose, method and nature are all theories.

DAVID: And further you see the tiny factories that are our cells as intelligent, when they are designed to run intelligently and constantly repeat their processes.

dhw: You always focus on those cellular processes which have become established and hence automatic, and you don’t seem to have grasped the elementary fact that all those processes, except for those present in the original first cells (possibly designed by your God) were once new, and new species can only be formed when instead of or in addition to repeating their processes, cells introduce new ones. (Shapiro calls them “evolutionary novelty”.)

You have completely ignored this all-important distinction between repetition of processes and the fact that new species can only arise through changes in the processes!

dhw: Hence evolution from single cells to trilobites, dinosaurs, the duck-billed platypus and humans.

DAVID: Your bold skips over the fact that we do not know how speciation happens, and I believe God did it by designing new forms.

I have stated over and over again that we don’t know how it happens, and that is why we can only theorize, and then test our theories to see how feasible they are. I know what you believe: that your God either popped in over and over and over again to do a dabble or he preprogrammed every species 3.8 billion years ago. And you reject my theistic version of Shapiro’s theory, that he might have endowed the original cells with the intelligence to do their own designing, because although cells act as if they are intelligent, you know they are not.