More Denton: Reply to David (Introduction)

by David Turell , Saturday, August 08, 2015, 14:20 (3185 days ago) @ dhw


> dhw:You do not hesitate to impose a purpose on your God - who you believe designed the universe in order to produce humans - and you do not hesitate to propose two methods of production: a 3.8-billion-year computer programme and/or direct intervention. That, you say, is “how he does it”.-From my exchange with Tony:-Saturday, August 08, 2015, 04:16 - David: Which makes the appearance of the Cambrian organisms even more amazing and brings to the fore your description how God's computer program might work, i.e., no need for precursors.- Tony; Unfortunately, without assuming direct prototype creation, the assumption has to be that all possibilities were in the original source code. I'm not certain the evidence supports that. Of course, we have no access to the original source code, so...-David: It has to be one or the other.-Doesn't it?-
> dhw: But the curiosity that has led you from your agnosticism to your panentheism somehow deserts you when it comes to the practicalities of your hypotheses. It's only when alternatives are proposed that you want to know details: e.g. the evidence and whereabouts of an inventive mechanism in the cell (though no-one has discovered the computer programme either), -Isn't the computer program the DNA code and all the overlying modification mechanisms that translate, suppress gene function, methylate, etc.? And God should be able to step in and re-write. How else might we get new species?