Innovation (Introduction)

by David Turell , Saturday, May 18, 2013, 15:10 (4006 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: I have objected to David's categorical statement: "Because species appear de novo, genetics provides adaptation but NOT speciation."
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> Nevertheless, you have agreed over and over again that the genome has to be at the centre of the inventive process: e.g. 6 May:
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> dhw:In my panpsychist scenario, innovation is caused by intelligent energy within the genome responding to changes in the environment. 
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> DAVID: If you put your intelligent energy into the genome then we are in agreement.
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> dhw: I do, and we were, and we should still be. Of course we have not found the mechanism, but your only divine alternative is Creationism, which you have always rejected in the past.-See my current note to Tony. What creates species and runs them at the core is DNA. But we don't undertand the jumps from any early species to a current one. I have repeated over and over I am a theistic evolutionist. God is involved in speciation, but He doesn't tell me how He does it with the DNA that has to be manipulated.-> David Your guess is not by chance. My guess is not by chance. What is left?[/i]
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> dhw: Creationism, my panpsychist hypothesis (with or without God), or agnosticism. I recommend the latter.-Agnosticism is non-answer. It is the position of wishing to know, studying the information and then saying it is all too incredulous, so I can't make up my mind. Tony's discussion is right on point: designer universe, origin of life, perfect living forms (again natures wonders). You want thinking energy in your theory, but it arrives nebulously and some how it organizes its thoughts and planning, a mental bootstrapping by some unknown method all of which had to be in place before the big bang. This is the major weakness of your theory. The rules that run the universe require a very sharp intellect, even before we get to origin of life and evolution.