Innovation (Introduction)

by dhw, Sunday, April 28, 2013, 12:10 (4026 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: What I know quite clearly is that there is intelligence in the cells in the form of an amazing code, its many layers, and the complex instructions within those layers to create automatic absolute control of the production processes of life and the responses to adversity when it appears.-In that case, I assume you are now prepared to accept the concept of the "intelligent cell"! It's the implications that are the issue between us.
 
DAVID: You clearly see the problem. And you don't accept chance. So you would like to invent a self-indulgent cell, to avoid design.-There are two levels to this discussion, and you are confusing them. The first is how evolution works, and over and over again I have tried to stress that the concept of the "intelligent cell" at a single stroke removes the major problems in Darwin's theory ... random mutations, gradualism, the so-called gaps in the fossil record. Your own concept of how evolution works is hamstrung by your insistence that the human branch of the bush was planned and preprogrammed in advance, whereas all other species are byproducts that were not planned and preprogrammed. This brings you into all kinds of difficulties, since most of the innovations leading from bacteria to humans are shared with other species. Once you accept the idea that the cells themselves contain an intelligent mechanism that enables them not only to adapt to changing environments (= responses to adversity) but also to invent something new when the environment allows for further experimentation, you can dispense with all the inconsistencies of your own scenario. You can also dispense with your atheistic type argument: it looks as if it thinks (is designed) but it doesn't (isn't)!
 
The second level was summed up in my post of 26 April at 14.46: "I'm arguing that there has to be an inventive intelligence at work within them. (How it got there is open to question.)" You now agree, and I have repeatedly argued that this concept does NOT exclude design. It's just as open to your God hypothesis as the theory of evolution itself. And it's at this point that I find myself in difficulty: how did this inventive intelligence within the cell come into being? (And of course we might ask exactly the same question of our own inventive intelligence.) I can't believe it was created by chance, or by a supreme, infinite expanse of eternally self-aware energy, or by non-conscious energy that gained awareness through and within the materials it created (my 'third way'). That is why I'm an agnostic. However, my ignorance of the source of the intelligence makes no difference to my growing conviction that the cell is not an automaton (which would require preprogramming of every single innovation) but has ... or has been given? ... an intelligence of its own. They are two separate issues.