Innovation (Introduction)

by dhw, Sunday, May 19, 2013, 18:09 (4005 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: If you put your intelligent energy into the genome then we are in agreement.-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.-DAVID: 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.-I am happy with your agreement that what creates species and runs them at the core is DNA (= the intelligent genome). You can argue that it is programmed or manipulated by God in ways you do not understand, and I can argue that PERHAPS (this is a hypothesis, not a belief) it runs itself in ways I do not understand. However, with your own theistic hypothesis, I would say that God setting up a mechanism which autonomously produces innovations = evolution, but God intervening and manipulating the mechanism = creationism. Perhaps, then, you are a creationist evolutionist.
 
DAVID: Your guess is not by chance. My guess is not by chance. What is left?-dhw: Creationism, my panpsychist hypothesis (with or without God), or agnosticism. I recommend the latter.-DAVID: 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.
 
This is an accurate summing-up of my position. I am indeed incredulous, and see both theism and atheism as blind faith in an unknown power (God/chance) whose workings we do not understand. Why do both camps feel the NEED to believe in something so unproven? What pressure forces you to abandon reason and take your leap of faith?-DAVID: 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.-God is "thinking energy", its intelligence arrives nebulously, somehow 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. That is the major weakness of your God theory. (Actually my panpsychist intelligence did NOT have to be in place before the big bang, which is a major strength of my hypothesis.)