Perry Marshall, who is religious, but not a biblical creationist (nor, he says. a supporter of ID), with his "Evolution 2.0" thesis, could be cited as someone who puts evolution down to intelligence at the cellular level. He's written a book about it, and I agree with a lot of what he has to say (though not his religious views), notably about how ridiculous it is to imagine that random mutations can account for evolution. If you have the time, you might care to check out a series of short videos on his website
here or a single long video
here. The latter video, by the way, is as good an introductory explanation of the absurd claims of Darwinists for random mutation as you're likely to come across.
He's not a third way person, but he shares some of their views e.g. on epigenetics and horizontal gene transfer. Here's a summary of his thesis from his book:
• Neo-Darwinism says Random Mutation + Natural Selection + Time = Evolution.
• Random Mutation is noise. Noise destroys.
• Cells rearrange DNA according to precise rules (Transposition).
• Cells exchange DNA with other cells (Horizontal Gene Transfer).
• Cells communicate with each other and edit their own genomes with incredibly sophisticated language.
• Cells switch code on and off for themselves and their progeny (Epigenetics).
• Cells merge and cooperate (Symbiogenesis).
• Species 1 + Species 2 = New Species (Hybridization). We know organisms rapidly adapt because scientists producenew species in the lab every day.
• #Evolution in 140 characters or less: Genes switch on, switch off, rearrange, and exchange. Hybrids double; viruses hijack; cells merge; winners emerge.
• Adaptive Mutation + Natural Selection + Time = Evolution 2.0
• DNA is code. All codes whose origin we know are designed.
I must confess that I'm not entirely sure what his position is: does he think that cells possess intelligence? That biomolecules do? And though he doesn't self-identify as an ID person, he does draw on some of their ideas and seems ultimately to agree that in some shape or form intelligence comes into play in evolution.
According to him, as in the penultimate bullet point above, we can replace the concept of
random mutation with
adaptive mutation, i.e. some kind of intelligent or conscious capacity to change in response to the environment
at the cellular level.
To me, this makes cells seem even more intelligent than human beings: for billions of years they have been doing things in a far more sophisticated manner than we can understand, even today. But does that make them
intelligent in their own right? I have my doubts. I think that intelligence in some as yet unknown way lies behind cellular behaviour, but are cells/biomolecules in and of themselves
intelligent?
Which brings me to the question of whether or not the ultimate source of intelligence can really be minutely controlling all cellular processes all the time. I don't think so, and the question may arise largely because of a tendency to think in a dualistic way. As soon as the ideas of a creator and creation arise, a conceptual divide is produced between the "spiritual" (a lousy descriptor) and the physical, which we think of in different ways.
Those who are dualists, such as theistic evolutionists (being simultaneously religionists
and accepters of Darwinian evolution), somehow manage to square off the disparity. Monists fall into two broad categories: those who think everything is physical, and that consciousness/intelligence is emergent, maybe even an illusion; and those who think that consciousness is primal, with the physical being illusory. "Illusory" here doesn't mean
unreal, so much as
misinterpreted.
One guy whose work has struck me recently is Donald Hoffman, a cognitive scientist who seems to me to be someone who is entertaining the idea that consciousness is primal: this video outlines his ideas:
A somewhat longer video podcast explores his ideas in greater depth:
I love his desktop metaphor for how we perceive our environments, and other species theirs. I love the way he's trying to mathematise consciousness or "conscious agents"; has put forward the hypothesis that interactions between conscious agents lead to higher level conscious agents, ultimately culminating in the conscious agent that is the whole universe. I love his open mindedness and the way he's put forward things he'll have to prove if his hypothesis is correct. So far, he's derived
de novo some of the equations of quantum mechanics.
I think he may rely a little too heavily on standard explanations of evolution (i.e. Darwinism), but he doesn't do that in too pushy a way, and concentrates more on natural selection than random mutation; I think he might grant that the source of variation may not primarily be random -- as appears to be Bernardo Kastrup's position on evolution. By the way, Hoffman isn't a panpsychist: he describes his philosophy as
Conscious Realism, dealt with in his paper
here.
I'll include one last recent (Sept. 17 2017) podcast with Hoffman, which asks questions (and gets answers) not entirely covered in the previous videos:
I find it interesting how thinking about evolution inevitably leads one to questions about consciousness; it seems that the two are inextricably linked, and that solving the one will provide the solution for the other.