LUCA latest: Shapiro redux (Introduction)

by David Turell , Monday, July 24, 2023, 17:04 (278 days ago) @ dhw

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: 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.

dhw: Please stop ignoring what Shapiro wrote. Read the above! It doesn’t say bacterial editing ability might explain evolution. It says cellular self-modification produces evolutionary novelty, and the rest of the summary you quote in your book lists all those qualities of cells which denote their intelligence.

Yes, I quoted Shapiro's theory, pure theory! All we know currently for fact is bacteria edit DNA.

DAVID: 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.

dhw: You always focus on those cellular processes which have become established and hence automatic, and you don’t seem to have grasped the elementary fact that all those processes, except for those present in the original first cells (possibly designed by your God) were once new, and new species can only be formed when instead of or in addition to repeating their processes, cells introduce new ones. (Shapiro calls them “evolutionary novelty”.) Hence evolution from single cells to trilobites, dinosaurs, the duck-billed platypus and humans.

Your bold skips over the fact that we do not know how speciation happens, and I believe God did it by designing new forms.