How epigenetics works (Introduction)

by dhw, Saturday, January 12, 2013, 19:13 (4123 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: My point is finer than as you interpret it. My point is that the new complexities are never required, but they happen anyway.
Not "finer". Exactly the same.-DAVID: I think that these observations imply a drive for complexity from the beginning. 
I myself have repeatedly stressed that the inventive mechanism must have been there from the beginning.-DAVID: Why God chose to advance through evolution is unknown to us. But that complexification leads to the bush like evolutionary result, and not Darwin's tree (as in his notebook).
I couldn't care less whether you call it a bush or a tree! Both structures branch out higgledy-piggledy in all directions.
 
DAVID: It is as if God said let's throw everything at the fan and see where it lands...
Exactly. If God exists, this is a scenario that fits in perfectly with the higgledy-piggledy bush. We agree at last!-DAVID: ...but since the process ended up with consciousness, obviously a very desirable goal, I must conclude that this shotgun approach was pre-ordained or guided to this desired result.
Well, at least "pre-ordained" is not as pin-point precise as "pre-programmed". If Tony's scatter-gun is fired in all directions for long enough (i.e. the inventive mechanism keeps innovating), you might say it's inevitable that one day it will hit the bullseye. However, a "desirable goal" leading to the "desired result" actually IS your conclusion. We know humans are here, and it is your reading of God's "desires" that is open to question. "Guided" = intervention, which also fits in with the bush, but implies either no initial purpose (working ad hoc) or difficulty hitting the target.-DAVID: My point about complexity at the very beginning of life is that the earliest cells had to be complex or they couldn't really BE Alive. 
I have never disagreed.-David: Chance cannot create that complexity. Therefore, God did it. Therefore there is a God. From my viewpoint it is a simple set of reasonable steps to that conclusion.
I have always shared your scepticism about chance. Unfortunately, there are two separate non-beliefs involved. You and I cannot believe in chance. At the same time I cannot believe in an equally unlikely, eternal, immaterial power that has either always been conscious or has somehow generated its own consciousness (see Tony's response to BBella under "Love me", 11 Jan. at 03.17). You can. That's why you are a theist and I am an agnostic!