More Denton: Reply to David (Introduction)

by dhw, Wednesday, July 29, 2015, 21:12 (3195 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: Your anthropocentric hypothesis leaves you wriggling around to explain the enormous diversity of life, and all its comings and goings, whereas mine gives a direct explanation.
DAVID: 'Direct explanation' does not correct explanation. Action by God is just as direct.-Nobody knows the correct explanation, but direct “action” is not the issue. Your hypothesis that God's purpose in creating the universe was to produce humans he could relate to doesn't fit in with the vast diversity of organisms and lifestyles which you claim could only be the result of his preprogramming or dabbling. Why would he preprogramme the weaverbird's nest if his purpose was to relate to humans? My hypothesis explains the diversity because in its theistic version, God gives organisms the wherewithal to do their own thing.-dhw: You have scurried back to your nebulous “intelligent information”, which we already dissected ages ago. What is it supposed to mean here? There is “information” that comes to all organisms from outside and requires processing if they are to survive, adapt, or innovate. There is “information” within all organisms that enables them to do the processing.
DAVID: Same issue. The original DNA of earliest life is a code that contains information. All codes contain information. Information just doesn't appear out of thin air. It can develop from thoughtful observation with experience or it can be given as in schooling.-The issue is not the origin of the original code (which may or may not be God's doing), but the mechanism that drives evolution. In my hypothesis, once the intelligent cells existed they would have learned from experience, and once they cooperated, they would also have learned from schooling (i.e. from one another's experiences).
 -DAVID:[...] Intelligence can interpret information and intelligence can create more information, but only after there is enough initial information to have life then create intelligence. Chicken and egg problem! No way around it, except panpsychism as an attribute of a panentheistic God.-Once more: the theory of evolution does not deal with the source of life and intelligence (which may or may not be your God), and nor does my hypothesis of the intelligent cell as its driving force. According to your hypothesis, what enables cells/cell communities to innovate is some kind of computer programme devised by God, which may look like intelligence but isn't. According to mine (theistic version), God gave the cells/cell communities intelligence.-DAVID: What is wrong with the simple concept of God guiding everything?-What is wrong is that it is not simple. Once more (my apologies for the umpteenth repetition): the first cells would have had to pass on millions of computer programmes that would switch themselves on automatically in billions of individual organisms, thus creating every innovation leading from bacteria to us, including a sudden flurry of switching on during the Cambrian. Throughout the billions of years, the programmes would also have had to cope with any number of environments, or alternatively God would have had to preprogramme the environmental changes. The programmes set up in the first cells contained not only all the innovations from single cell to human, but also the instructions for complex habitats and lifestyles. Alternatively, God personally fiddled with the insides of all the organisms to transform them, and personally created programmes for their habitats and lifestyles once they had been preprogrammed into existence. I don't see this as simple. -dhw: The Cambrian lasted 5-10 million years, which allows for quite a few generations (I calculated the number in an earlier post.) We must assume that the necessary changes did take place in the allotted time.... But mine [theory] does have a simple logic, if only I could get it across to you...
DAVID: Not simple logic at all. Lets use an analogy: life is progressing along as very simple forms on a flat plain in the Precambrian times, and suddenly falls off a cliff into the Cambrian where it has amazingly changed into very complex multi-organ-system animals at the bottom. This is what the fossil record shows, no time for a change. [...] You are using the whole Cambrian to gloss over the suddenness. Won't work.-Let's try a different analogy. The Earth is covered with water. The water recedes. Freddy Fish sees dry land and decides to investigate. If the relevant parts of his body don't adapt straight away to breathing out of water, he will die. Many of his mates do die. But Freddy is the lucky one, and his cells manage to work it out in time. And his cells also work out that he'll get around much better if they do some rejigging, so they produce legs where once he had fins. My (hypothetical) intelligent mechanism exploits the opportunities provided by a new environment. A sudden major change in the environment could lead to a sudden burst of major innovations, but innovations that don't work straight away won't survive. That is the simple logic. Compare it to the scenario needed for your “guidance”, and tell me which is simpler.