More Denton: Reply to David (Introduction)

by David Turell , Tuesday, August 11, 2015, 19:21 (3183 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: Your conclusion that God preprogrammed the first cells with every future innovation, lifestyle and constructed home, or personally intervened to organize them - like your conclusion that God's purpose in starting life was to produce humans - has nothing whatsoever to do with science, and so I doubt very much if it will change as science advances.-My thinking has come totally from the science articles and interpretative books on science I have read. I anticipate that science will continue to show more and more complexity in the biochemistry of life, and therefore demand that design be accepted. The same holds true for cosmologic understanding of the universe, which so far has the appearance of being created.-> dhw: Your “basic start of life information” is a billion and one programmes in the first cells which will control all subsequent life by automatically and mindlessly changing the underlying DNA in all their descendants; mine gives the first cells an intelligence which has a vast potential for changing the DNA as their descendants learn to cooperate in new combinations and in new environments, collecting more and more information as they do so. -But all we know cells can do is modify the existing code and the information it contains. Epigenetic markers change gene expression. Mutations modify genes and according to the experts tend to destroy existing information, which is why I am of the opinion God runs evolution. Organisms appear to be incapable of doing it themselves.-> dhw: particularly when the only argument you seem to offer is that from the outside one can't tell the difference between intelligent action and automatism. (A determinist could use the same argument against free will, but you would expect a bit more than that, wouldn't you?)-No, we sense free will but as it is part of consciousness it presents the same problem when looking at a functional brain from the outside. Note my discussions with Romansh.-> 
> Tony's approach entails separate creation of every prototype. Since when did you buy separate creation as opposed to evolution?-My theistic evolution theory is akin to Tony in many ways. Guided evolution is very similar to separate creations.-> dhw: Perhaps your constant focus on humans as the be-all and end-all, different in kind and not degree, blinds you to the fact that if humans evolved from earlier forms of life, they may have inherited certain behavioural traits, and these might include intelligent experimentation. When pressed, Tony himself has admitted that he is not prepared to say whether these biochemical interactions are preprogrammed, dabbled, or the result of God giving organisms the ability to work it out for themselves, because “we don't understand the process or the mechanism so a definitive statement is premature.” What part of his approach do you now buy?-I'm still the same. I'll buy Tony if the ability to 'work it out' includes God-given guidelines.