The Intelligent Cell (Origins)

by dhw, Thursday, December 15, 2011, 10:42 (4725 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Of course the concept is vague. It can't be otherwise. You have arrived at my point of view whether you like that or not.

We shall see in a moment.

DAVID: You question my attempted characterizations of the UI. The idea of design with pre-planning is an educated guess, because I don't know how evolution, if it is not guided, as a natural very random process can create organisms of such complexity at the biochemical level.

Nobody knows. The roundabout history of evolution, with its huge range of extinctions, could indicate anything but pre-planning. Your God would have had to work out all the environmental and genetic changes that have led from the single cell to us. And the idea that the dodo and the dinosaurs were essential to the evolution of man seems to me as unlikely as the atheist faith in chance assembling the mechanisms of life and evolution. Experimental trial and error, and random hit and miss are also “educated” guesses.

DAVID: And as for humans as a chosen species, we started with the chimps and bonobos with the same common ancestor. Each species could have advanced. Only we did. I can't answer why but I think we will find the reason on some new mechanism in the genome. In 6 million years we grew a giant brain, when the other primate species have survived, unchanged, just fine. There is no known or demonstrated 'drive' in nature to cause this. Just remember the human phenotype became smaller and weaker than the common ancestor, as judging by the chimp phenotype. And to make up for the weakness, the giant brain appeared. I see nothing in the challenges of nature to cause this, but it happened.

There’s nothing in nature to explain ANY such advances. Bacteria survived OK, and scientists would be delighted to find the most primitive form of life on Mars even without evolved species. So what was the need for greater complexity? Not being able to answer is hardly grounds for belief.

DAVID: So, you can see I have made educated guesses, but I recognize that I could be totally wrong about my attempts at characterizations.

Fair enough. But you are convinced by your educated guesses which could be totally wrong, and such conviction demands a faith I do not have.

DAVID: You and I are at the same point. You are simply not willing to dig into the next step as I have done. I think you are still contaminated by childhood religious teaching. I've cleared my mind of it. I'm not trying to create a religion, or find a 'God' as they have previously described. They all lead in the wrong direction by making God so personal. I think the human attributes given to God are wishful thinking by self-centered humans. I don't know how personal He is.
Despite this I feel personally close to God. My own weakness, or is it intuitive at a consciousness level? I admit it feels good, which is not a scientifically or philosophically correct answer.

Then may I suggest that it is you who are “contaminated” by childhood religious teaching, though I don’t like the word “contaminated”. You are happy with your decision, and I’m far from unhappy with my indecision. We both love life and are awestruck by its beauty and complexity. That’s not contamination. But feeling personally close to God, belief in his having a plan, and in humans as a chosen species...those are anthropocentric ideas which are inherited from conventional religion. If you agree that they arise out of no more than educated guesses and possible personal weakness, you will have come a little closer to my neutral, “uncontaminated” point of view, “whether you like it or not.”