David's theory of evolution: Stephen Talbott's view III (Evolution)

by dhw, Sunday, June 28, 2020, 13:23 (1391 days ago) @ David Turell

One of several quotes: “These phenomena require individual cells to work out what they need to do. And the ingenious restoration of the blood-vessel network reveals that there is an over-arching sense of the structure of the whole area in which this remarkable repair takes place.”

dhw: Once again, I can only commend your integrity in producing articles that directly support a theory you dislike so intensely.

DAVID: It is amazing how widely different our interpretations turn out from the same information. I see God's hand in all of this amazing ability of organization by senseless molecules. Life is a symphony of molecular reactions following a framework of information provided initially by God. The ID site directed me to this new Talbott input, indicating a whole cadre of IDers think as I do.

But presumably NOT as Talbott does. I hope IDers will take his ideas more seriously than you do.

DAVID: The bold is a mistaken idea about God and control over living matter.

Your opinion against Talbott’s.

DAVID: I'll repeat: the rapid reactions and interactions by organic molecules can make mistakes and God built in corrective measures, but they cannot be perfect and errors will persist. The intelligence cells follow is God's. What Talbott says is seemingly disorganized cells somehow know the forms they must achieve with no evidence of that future in the present. There must be an underlying plan. It is very much like an ant colony, each individual programmed to do its prescribed part, but each ant is not aware of the goal.

I have thanked you for reproducing an article which supports my theory. You have frequently claimed that nobody supports me, and have even tried to downgrade Shapiro’s theory of “natural genetic engineering”, which is also based on cellular intelligence. You also prefer to ignore scientists such as McClintock, Margulis and Bühler. Talbott’s view is clear from another collection of quotes:

…their very life consists of the activity through which they grow and transform their own physical means of acting.

…the profound intelligence immanent at the molecular level

We are looking, in other words, at a present, effectively striving intelligence

It gives rise to its own material basis. It is this living activity alone of which we can meaningfully say, “It has the capacity for evolution.” Living things are by their very nature powers of origination.

The task I would recommend for the intelligent design theorist, in other words, is not to confront science with an outside Power that must periodically intervene in order to make up for the world’s “deadness.” Rather, it is to transform this science from within, by overcoming the bias that refuses to acknowledge intelligent activity where we actually see it.

That could be aimed directly at you, David!

All this testifies to the fact that the organism’s native intelligence — even, or especially, when observed at the molecular level — is so obvious that no one manages to describe living activities as if it were absent.

To say that “natural selection did it” is just as much a refusal to investigate the actual life of organisms as to say “God did it.”

A beautifully balanced comment!

This in no way conflicts with any convictions you may hold regarding a transcendent creative power sustaining the universe. It is merely to say that what we observe on earth is a power of life immanent in the organisms around us. Presumably you believe not only in the transcendence, but also in the immanence of the creative power.

DAVID: the above paragraph is his advice to ID. He and dhw are twins.

Thank you. I am flattered, and once again commend you for reproducing an article by another scientist whose views I know you respect and who categorically supports the theory you detest.