More Denton: Last essay of a 3 part series (Introduction)

by dhw, Friday, July 17, 2015, 13:02 (3208 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: My theory is not Darwin's theory! I have said that you and I reject gradualism. Innovations produced by the inventive mechanism would have to work straight away (in leaps) or they would not survive.
DAVID: The leaps bother me and argue against common descent It is as if the inventive mechanism has guidance or pre-planning, which has been my constant comment.-If innovations work promptly - whether guided, preplanned, or invented from within - why should the leaps argue against common descent? They don't happen in mid-air but within existing organisms! Guidance can only mean direct interference, which brings us back to your God personally organizing all the innovations and natural wonders (our beloved weaverbird). Pre-planning can only mean your God putting the programmes into the first cells, to be passed down through billions of years to billions of organisms. Mind boggling, especially if a believer insists that God's purpose was to produce humans. -DAVID: How do cells decide what to invent....?
dhw: Perhaps cells decide like humans: if conditions are right, they experiment. If successful, the innovation survives; if not, it perishes.
DAVID: Frankly I don't think there is time enough (by your proposal) to go from apes in six million years and get what we see in humans. Remember human generations are producing at slow rate of 20 years.-As I keep saying, innovations must work promptly or they won't survive. If the inventive mechanism guides the changes, what precedent tells you that 300,000 generations would not suffice? (Thank you to whoever invented the pocket calculator.) -dhw: Every human invention, like every evolutionary innovation, is a leap.-DAVID: And is just the problem, the leaps by your approach of unguided experimentation are not a reasonable explanation. -If the experiments are the product of an intelligent inventive mechanism, they would not be "unguided", and they would be motivated, just like ours, by the search for improvement. As always, I offer my hypothesis as an alternative to chance and divine preprogramming or separate creation (dabbling). I think it is just as reasonable, if not more so - but what criteria do we have for “reasonableness”, when the whole process of life and evolution is so shrouded in mystery? -dhw: This allows for both hypotheses: it might mean information that enabled the mechanism to do its own autonomous inventing, or information that preprogrammed every single innovation that led from bacteria to humans, including the weaverbird's nest and a billion other natural wonders along the way. Which seems more likely? 
DAVID: The information that produced patterns of development from the beginning, which patterns are obvious, i.e. Pentadactyl, etc.-Yes, the patterns are obvious. It is also obvious that if common descent is true, patterns would be handed down. That does not alter the possibility that your God designed the inventive mechanism, and the inventive mechanism designed the patterns. -dhw: Yet again: I reject Darwin's gradualism. My hypothesis EXPLAINS the leaps, it doesn't ignore them.
DAVID: It doesn't explain the ORFans, about 10% of unrelated genes to anything in the past, and argue against uncontrolled common descent, as Denton points out.-Inventions are new by definition. What do you mean by “uncontrolled common descent”? If cells/cell communities have their own form of intelligence, then that would “control” the direction they move in. I don't know enough about Denton's work, but perhaps you can tell me if he ever talks of God preprogramming the first cells or dabbling with their make-up.-dhw: Yes, life is a miracle. That tells us nothing about whether this or any other life-bearing universe was fine-tuned by a god.
DAVID: John Leslie sums it up best: "Either there is a God and/or multiple universes" (probably slightly paraphrased).-As we have discussed in the past, this is not an alternative. If God exists, there is no reason to suppose that in the course of eternity he would have twiddled his immaterial thumbs until a mere 13.8 billion years ago. And if first cause mindless energy transmuting itself into matter could produce one universe, it could produce many. However, I am far from convinced that this universe began 13.8 billion years ago. Even if the big bang theory is true, we have no idea what preceded it, and it could just as well have been an event within an existing, eternal and infinite universe. Eternity and infinity offer the same opportunities as a multiverse. The alternative is: “Either there is a God or there is no God.”