How epigenetics works (Introduction)

by dhw, Wednesday, January 09, 2013, 19:21 (4337 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Yes I think God designed a genome mechanism to respond in a rather automatic and autonomic fashion to environmental challenges. The cells are not intelligent, but contain information implanted there probably from the beginning of life. The cells do not wilfully make changes on their own. They are programmed to do so. They are no more intelligent than your adding machine, which always gives you intelligent answers, but if you asked it, it cannot tell you how it did the sum.
I hope to finally settle the issue: cells are not intelligent, but are programmed to use information coded into them.-Some people think that humans are also programmed to use information coded into them! I know you hope to settle the issue, and I hesitate to go on trying the patience of our resident Job, but I'm unhappy with the reasoning that leads to a conclusion with such far-reaching implications ... for the theory of evolution, for some religions, and for atheism.-You think "God designed a genome mechanism to respond in a rather automatic and autonomic fashion to environmental challenges." I like "rather", because it leaves room for something extra, which I will add later. Why only "environmental challenges"? My focus is more on innovation than on adaptation (the response required by a challenge). We don't know to what extent these processes overlap, but you yourself have made the point ... from the survival of bacteria to the non-necessity of the human brain ... that evolution did not REQUIRE innovation. Every step from the first forms of life to ourselves, however, involves countless new inventions. And so if your God designed the mechanism, we have to decide whether he created each invention separately, "pre-programmed" it in the earliest forms of life, or it assembled itself.-Your adding machine can do nothing but add. It cannot come up with anything new. In this respect, it is the same as the liver cell, kidney cell, heart cell. But the intelligent force that put together the adding machine ... i.e. human intelligence ... can also make other machines. At one time there were no livers, kidneys or hearts. And so, once more, either your God invented each one separately, pre-programmed it right from the beginning, or created a mechanism capable of inventing it on its own initiative, analagous to humans inventing adding machines etc. on their own initiative. The latter is what I'm suggesting, not necessarily as a response to environmental challenges, but simply because new environments allowed for innovations which could live alongside existing forms of life. The creation of something new that actually works requires not just "information" but the intelligent use of that information.-I'm very reluctant to define "intelligence", which is so difficult to separate from "consciousness/awareness", and I prefer to dwell on what I regard as the fact that there are different levels. However, I'm going to give it a go, because this discussion needs it. I suggest: "the ability of living organisms to learn, understand, remember, process and use information". NB this removes the need to discuss artificial intelligence, which I regard as a separate subject; "use" allows for inventiveness; the definition neither includes nor excludes self-awareness, because in my view any definition has to allow for the different levels. If you accept it, perhaps you can also accept that, unless God pre-programmed every single innovation, new organs were invented by the intelligent "genome mechanism" (no doubt scientifically more accurate than my "cell") which ultimately enabled the adding machine to be invented by intelligent humans, the ant colony to be invented by intelligent ants, and virtually every procedure you've listed under "Nature's Wonders" to be invented by other intelligent organisms. In other words, "rather automatic and autonomic" should be supplemented by a degree of autonomous intelligence, without which there could have been no innovation and hence no evolution.