An inventive mechanism (Evolution)

by David Turell , Wednesday, September 03, 2014, 02:18 (3521 days ago) @ dhw


> dhw:Firstly, I don't think you should use “inventive” of a mechanism that invents nothing and merely carries out pre-planned instructions. “Preplanning” and “preprogramming” are far clearer.-Fair enough. I said I was thinking out loud. I should probably have used the term "creative mechanism" with the implication taht it carries background plans in it.
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> dhw: Therefore there are gaps in our knowledge, and your theory depends just as much as mine on speculation as to what lies in those gaps.-True, but my problem with your theory is that you are giving properties to cells taht I know they do not have and are not capable of using. See my comment about your 'thinking' cells below.- 
> dhw: But other forms of life, including plants and bacteria, do their own “thinking”, and if they didn't, they wouldn't survive. -You are equating the ability to react with "thought".We find only minimal reflective thinking in other manmmals and now you want to put it into amoeba?
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> DAVID: It is very apparent to me (and Tony) that speciation requires the input of new information in the genome. Either the information is already there, ready to be tapped when required by environmental changes, or there is directed input. I favor the former.
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> dhw: This is your preprogramming versus your dabbling. ..... Of course we shall never find those first “computers”,-You have sidestepped the issue of is the genome really a computer or not. Tony and I say it is. It is programmed. It required information to be in the code of the program. You have said roughly, your theory can't work if the genome is a computer.-> DAVID: As I see it, your theory requires itty-bitty, which has never been in the fossil record. Remember, I started as an agnostic. There are reasons why I am a theist, and this is a major one.
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> My theory does not require itty-bitty. -Yes, it does. Tony explains it well today.-> dhw; Your two theories (preprogramming and dabbling) seem to me to depend on our finding something a few million degrees beyond what is now known. Remember, I started as a theist, and then an atheist. There are reasons why I am an agnostic, and this is a major one. -And I am not an agnostic because the genome requires information for a quaternary digital code, far beyond human invention, among other thoughts you have seen of mine.