How epigenetics works (Introduction)

by David Turell , Wednesday, January 09, 2013, 22:26 (4337 days ago) @ dhw
edited by unknown, Wednesday, January 09, 2013, 22:31

dhw: 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". -I can accept that definition as it is broad and covers most of what we think of when discussiong intellgent consciousness.-> dhw: 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" ........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.-> 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.-Brief answer: yours is the $64,000 question. We just don't know enough to give clear answers. I have my preferences.-Since we really still don't know how species originate, your proposals are valid up to a point. Autonomic means automatic control without outside control, and I believe adaptive mechanisms appear to fit that role to a marked degree, but the genome acts on implanted information to do that. My internal organs run automatically but under tight feedback controls. They invent nothing. The genome adapts with epigenetic changes, but the steps to a new species are not clear. Not to me at least. Epigenetics plays a major role, but it is not clear how inheritable those adaptations are.-I must admit, there is no way of knowing whether God steps in at appropraite moments or whether the uncalled-for advances, multicellularity, the big brain, etc. are pre-programmed. Since our arrival on the scene with our consciousness is uncalled for, the best guess is that it is all pre-programmed. We haven't decoded all of junk DNA yet. Much of it as I have pointed out is just geographic filler to set up 3-D relationships between genes and other modifying and controlling segments for expression. I would guess that any pre-planning is in the junk portion not yet understood. -The issue is, how bright is the mind of God? If He is all they say, then He did this in the beginning. If not that bright, He has to reajust things now and then. Since He prefers evolutionary processes in making a universe and also life and humans, I must really conclude that He appears to be pretty assured of his ability to control ongoing processes and not have bother to step in. That doesn't make me a deist. I think He is fully aware of what is going on and watches closely as a good theist would expect.