The biochemistry of cell communication (Introduction)

by David Turell , Tuesday, September 06, 2016, 19:04 (2787 days ago) @ dhw

David: Remember all living beings fall under a bell shaped curve of variability. The devils who are creating a new immune population were at the high end of the curve.[/i]
> 
> But how does this preclude even the possibility that the changes are guided by cellular intelligence responding to environmental conditions? This a genuine question - I am not disputing your explanation! -I've agreed with Shapiro, that it makes sense that cells can modify (edit) their DNA to some degree (epigenetics). I do not agree that it is intelligence ion any sense of planning or thinking. It think it is an automatic mechanism settled in on-board instructions.-> dhw:(But I still don't understand the point of partial immunity, since you have said that this would not enable organisms to survive.)-See the sentence above about bell-shaped curves and variability. Some organisms will have enough immunity to stagger thru and then mate to create more immune progeny.
> 
> Your second post supports your argument concerning pre-existing useful attributes. 
> 
> QUOTES: 
> “Menna Jones at the University of Tasmania, Australia, and her colleagues recently analysed the genomes of almost 300 devils from three separate regions in Tasmania.”
> "The researchers compared genetic samples taken from the three devil populations before and after the cancer arrived in each area.”
> Populations affected by the disease differed from pre-disease ones in two regions of the genome - both with known links to cancer and immunity.” "
> “These gene variants would have been around before, but there was no evolutionary advantage to them being at high frequency…” (David's bold)
> 
> dhw: I'm in no position to dispute this, but the disease first struck in 1996, and the article is dated 2 September 2016. .... They seem more concerned with the speed at which the variants spread, but I am pondering the origin of the variants. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but these are the only origins I can visualize: 1) the variants were already present, and it was sheer luck that they happened to produce immunity; 2) the variants were already present, and your God had planted them there with a dabble, or had preprogrammed them in order to produce immunity to this particular cancer; 3) some of the devils were aware of the cancer, and worked out their own variants by altering their genome. Again, I am simply trying to understand how you think it all works.-Do you understand bell-shaped curves statistically? For devils it would be from one left end no immunity to the other right end with partial immunity, with the average at the top of the curve very slight suggestion of some immunity.
> 
> XXXX 
>> David: Of course our intelligence is part of our consciousness. I was just sorting out how I think the brain handles both.
> 
> dhw: My point was that if you believe in an afterlife, it doesn't make sense for the brainless you to be conscious without your intelligence (plus other attributes such as memory). And yet you insist that cells cannot be intelligent because they do not have brains. Either intelligence/consciousness/memory etc. can exist without the brain or they can't.-The soul doesn't require a brain. It returns to the universal consciousness, just as Sheldrake's human species consciousness (hsc) is received by the brain, but the hsc exists as a field of consciousness, no species single brain required. Just an aspect of quantum requirement for consciousness to exist, as God uses quantum mechanics to make the universe.