Bacterial motors carefully studied (Introduction)

by dhw, Friday, April 08, 2016, 13:56 (2940 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: The fourth possibility [an autonomous inventive mechanism] is WITHOUT guidelines. The fact that you disagree with it (just as you disagree with the chance hypothesis) does not mean you can leave it out!
DAVID: Well you agree with the chance issue, but refuse to look closely at the 'landscape' problem of how to pick out the right new molecules and the right arrangement of those molecules. Either the IM must know them in advance or be instructed about them in advance. Your hypothesis just assumes there is a mechanism that can handle this issue. There is no way around this objection. But something must solve it for species to advance to the next step of complexity. For me that is implanted guidance.-I don't know how cell communities manage to reorganize themselves in order to produce something new. You don't know how your God manages to “guide” cell communities into producing something new (you don't believe in your own 3.8-billion-year programme hypothesis, and you don't know how God does his dabbles). And yet although we have both admitted our ignorance of how the process actually works, you still focus on what I don't know as if somehow that made what you don't know less of a problem than mine. To sum it up: nobody knows how speciation takes place. That is why people come up with different theories.
 
dhw: Of course the problems are real, and that is why my autonomous inventive mechanism remains a hypothesis, just like chance, separate creation, and your divine “guidance” (= preprogramming and/or dabbling). There is no evidence for any of them. The admission that God might do it is hardly “anything but God”. I see a theistic mind saying 'nothing but MY god', while not admitting that God might think differently!-DAVID: I come back to the same problem: who or what picks the new molecules/arrangement for the new species? The gaps are there. For me if God doesn't do it or arrange for it, it can't happen (the gaps). I don't see the comment about God thinking having validity beyond His choice of using evolution [f]or creating humans.-See above for the “same problem” of innovation. And I know you can't see beyond your own interpretation of God's thinking. It is apparently inconceivable for you that God might have used evolution as an experiment to see what would happen if he set in motion a free-for-all. That need not preclude the occasional dabble (perhaps to create a creature with self-awareness), but it does preclude your hypothesis that every single innovation, lifestyle and natural wonder in the history of evolution was “guided” (i.e. preprogrammed and/or personally dabbled) for the sake of humans. Since the latter is your fixed belief, of course you can't imagine any other hypothesis having validity.