Miscellany (General)

by dhw, Thursday, October 14, 2021, 08:34 (926 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: God drives evolution and sustainable survival is simply required.

dhw: So if survival is required, and your God makes the changes that lead to speciation in order to improve the organism’s required chances of survival, how does that come to mean that “survival has nothing to do with the appearance of new species”?

DAVID: The quote means, as you know, means survival dos not produce the next species in evolution, God does.

It means no such thing. If your God produced all the new species, and specially designed their new mechanisms (e.g. flippers for legs) to improve their chances of survival, then he did his designing to ensure that the changes which led to speciation enabled the new species to survive. That is the connection between survival and new species which your bolded statement above denies.

Crocodiles change skull forms
dhw: As usual, you dodge the issue. Autonomous intelligence does not exclude God the designer. It simply changes the method he would have used to fulfil his purposes.

DAVID: I don't dodge your rigid theories. Autonomous cell intelligence is unproven theory based on the outside appearance of how cells work. […]

dhw: Of course the theory is unproven, as is your own theory of automaticity, but you have as usual dodged the point, which is that autonomous intelligence does not exclude a designer, and so your conclusion from “straight biochemistry” is no more and no less a “hope” than Shapiro’s, which also allows for a designer.

DAVID: And I feel the RNA article follows standard text book theory that cells automatically produce all their products.

dhw: I respect your feelings, and I wish you would acknowledge that your theory is no less “hopeful” than mine, and cellular intelligence – a theory supported by some notable experts in the field who also deserve respect – does not exclude a designer God but (if he exists) simply changes the method he uses to achieve whatever his purpose might be.

DAVID: My answer is in 'giraffe' today: "like all cell processes, the output of required product never changes. You eat and your stomach cells produce acid, automatically, every meal!!! Immune cells work the same way!!! […]

Answered on the giraffe thread, but when scientists in the field such as McLintock, Margulis (“I do think consciousness is a property of all living cells") and Shapiro champion the concept of cellular intelligence, you could perhaps be just a little more cautious in your dismissal of the idea. And once again, please note that it does NOT exclude your God as the possible designer, which was your original objection to my theory.