Biological complexity: how we smell odors (Introduction)

by David Turell , Wednesday, June 01, 2016, 21:29 (2878 days ago) @ dhw


> dhw: Of course, you are perfectly entitled to your opinion, and as nobody knows the truth, you may be right, but this forum is a quest for possible truths (we are never going to establish absolute, objective truths), so I hope you will forgive me if I continue to probe,-I want you to probe. It helps clarify my thoughts. -> 
> dhw: All communication (other than what we term “psychic”) depends on molecular reactions of one sort or another. The mystery is not the technique of communicating but the source of the messages to be communicated.-In cells it is the molecular reactions that act purposively and are programmed that way. The source is not chance but design.-
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> David's comment: this exact mechanism is not the important point. It is a good illustration of how cells communicate in organisms, and these various communication techniques are still being found. This may look like the cells are intelligent in signaling, but the opposite view is this is an aspect of intelligent planning in the information that is at the basis of life's processes.
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> dhw: If the cells don't do their own “planning”, either your God preprogrammed all the messages when life began, or he personally provided and provides them ad hoc (dabbled/dabbles) when each new situation arises. This seems to me somewhat less likely than cells doing their own processing and taking their own decisions on what to communicate to one another. It is perfectly possible that what looks like intelligence actually is intelligence, and of course they may have acquired their intelligence “thru God's agency”.-Nice balancing act on your fence.
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> dhw: Fair comment. Unfortunately, an atheist could say that an infinite and eternal process of self-transforming energy and matter would eventually and inevitably produce the same complexity of our reality.-The atheist has to propose that energy can be self-transforming, something no one has ever observed.