LUCA latest: Shapiro redux (Introduction)

by David Turell , Sunday, July 23, 2023, 17:23 (279 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: All we see are epigenetic editing, nothing close to speciation. Nothing 'major' in current research.

dhw: It’s a theory! Nobody knows how speciation happens! But if we know that “minor” autonomous editing does occur, why should we discount the possibility that “major” autonomous editing could also have occurred when conditions required it?

DAVID: "Major autonomous editing...when conditions required it" is what happened, but that 'why' does not tell us 'how' it happened.

dhw: Agreed. Thank you for repeating my bold. How does that come to mean we must discount the possibility that intelligent cells could have been the agents of major as well as known minor editing.

It is still happening in bacteria, but currently nowhere else. Since no new species are popping up, do you infer previously speciating brilliant cells have stopped?

dhw: Meanwhile, what evidence has been found to prove the theoretical existence of a divine, 3.8-billion-year old programme for every innovation, lifestyle, strategy, natural wonder in the history of evolution. What evidence is there for an unknown, sourceless mind named God theoretically intervening to specially design every innovation etc. in the history of evolution (99% of which are/were irrelevant to what you say was his one and only purpose)?

Same old complaint. The designs of life require a desiging mind.[/i]

DAVID: I faithfully presented Shapiro as an historical figure in the debate.

dhw: You faithfully quoted his exact summary of his theory, e.g. “evolutionary novelty arises from the production of new cell and multicellular structures as a result of cellular self-modification and cell fusions.” Stop pretending that I have “blown it up”.

DAVID: What you have blown up is that cells have the intelligence to create irreducible complexity in living forms.

dhw: I have never mentioned the “irreducible complexity” of anything. I have repeated word for word Shapiro’s theory, and added that it is perfectly possible that your God designed the original cells and their intelligence. Please stop dodging the issues and inventing arguments I have never used.

The issue is that Shapiro proposed the bacterial ability to edit their DNA might explain evolution! You morphed that into brilliant cell committees running evolution. And further you see the tiny factories that are our cells as intelligent, when they are designed to run intelligently and constantly repeat their processes.