Automatic cell activity (Introduction)

by dhw, Friday, April 26, 2013, 15:04 (4025 days ago) @ David Turell

Uncommon descent: Evolution (uppercase E ) is the belief that everything in the world evolved by blind chance.-Dhw: Evolution is not a belief, but let that pass. It's the theory that describes the process by which living organisms have developed from earlier ancestral forms. -DAVID: Your interpretation of Evolutionary theory is wrong.
 
The above is not an interpretation of evolutionary theory. It's simply a definition, and you have left out the remainder of the paragraph, which covers every criticism you have made below! I wrote:-"It has nothing to do with the creation of man-made objects. How the process works is the subject of ongoing research, but many religious people believe that their god started and even directed it (= design), and Darwin himself emphasized that his theory was compatible with religion (though of course it is incompatible with Creationism).-DAVID: As I interpret the purveyors of a strictly Darwin-style of evolutionary theory, it is a "belief" that the whole process is constructed from a chance mechanism. Dawkins hangs his hat on chance. That means atheism is OK, since all evolution is a natural chance process. -That is Dawkins' interpretation. I am not offering any interpretation at all, and I could hardly have made it clearer that evolutionary theory is NOT confined to Dawkins' beliefs. -DAVID: But it looks too complex to me to be entirely by chance. That is why I believe in theistic evolution. -And what I wrote explicitly covers theistic evolution. Or are you arguing that theistic evolutionists do not believe their god started and may even have directed "the process by which living organisms have developed from earlier ancestral forms".
 
DAVID: And that is why your interpretation above is wrong. Theory is a form of belief, and it does not 'describe' an accurate process. It proposes a process to be investigated, which is then open for research.
 
If a theory is a proposal, how can it be a form of belief? The theory of evolution is still a theory, whether you believe it or not! I didn't say it describes an 'accurate' process. The process is the development of living organisms from earlier ancestral forms, but "how the process works is the subject of ongoing research". You have almost echoed my own words! -DAVID: Chance mutation and natural selection now appear to be a tiny part of the process, and machinations within the genome are discovered to be a major portion of the process.-Agreed (and all part of our "intelligent cell" discussion), but this does not invalidate my definition of evolutionary theory, or justify your assault on neutrally innocent me for saying things I did not say, and for not saying things I did say!