Cell response to electric field (Introduction)

by dhw, Monday, April 08, 2013, 14:31 (4248 days ago) @ David Turell

Dhw: The section you have omitted is the section which deals with innovation! I gave sex, legs, livers, eyes, wings etc. as examples. Innovation is what leads to new species.-DAVID: Ignored purposely. We know that new species have new innovations. What we also know is that the fossil record does not show the gradualism of Charles Darwin. Species arrive de novo and we do not know the mechanism.-We have long since agreed that Darwin's gradualism is out and Gould's punctuated equilibrium is in. The fact that we do not know the mechanism for innovation is hardly a reason for ignoring the problem and any possible explanations.-dhw: Let me repeat: you can either attribute innovations "to random mutations, to your God creating or preprogramming each one separately, or to an inbuilt mechanism which comes up with its own inventions."-DAVID: I doubt the 'random mutation mechanism' since most mutations are harmful or neutral and mutations do not seem to add 'new information' and may actually destroy existing information, a point which has been demonstrated. -Already agreed.-DAVID: Choices two and three are birds of the same feather: pre-programming is a built-in mechanism.-Choice two is that each innovation has been preprogrammed or created separately by your God; choice three, the one which you have clearly set your mind against, is that the mechanism COMES UP WITH ITS OWN INVENTIONS, i.e. that it has its own inventive intelligence. Birds of a very different feather.-dhw: That is what we agreed to call "the intelligent genome"." If you do not agree that "the ability to use information and create something NEW with it" is a kind of intelligence, perhaps you could give me your own definition.-DAVID: I have disagreed above. The intelligence we are discussing is prior to the genome's formation. The genome is information and instructions. The genome acts as if it is intelligent, appears intelligent, but it is only an automaton responding to its coded information. This is equivalent to Dawkins telling us evolution looks designed, but that is only an 'appearance of design'. The genome is designed to act as if it were thinking things out. It really doesn't.-Unless you agree with Dawkins that evolution is NOT designed, I'm afraid you're shooting yourself in the foot (no cowboy should ever do such a thing!). Dawkins tells us that appearances deceive: evolution looks designed, but it isn't. You are making the same sort of claim: the genome looks as if it thinks, but it doesn't. And you offer no more support for your claim than Dawkins offers for his. So here's the converse: if evolution looks designed, maybe it is; and if the genome looks as if it thinks, maybe it does. You have admitted that we don't know how the mechanism for innovation works. We have agreed to exclude chance. We are left with God creating or preprogramming every innovation separately, or a mechanism (which God may or may not have invented) that does its own inventing. Neither of us knows the answer, so why not keep an open mind?-Opponents of free will, which you believe in, would use exactly the same terms as yours: "humans act as if they are intelligent, appear intelligent, but are only automatons responding to their coded information." If you believe that humans, just like your God, have a form of intelligence that is independent of material cells (which presumably enables them to be themselves in the afterlife you also believe in), why can't you even countenance the possibility that the genome may be governed by its own "intelligence"? Repeating the claim that the genome is an automaton is no more scientific than Dawkins repeating the claim that life and the universe appeared to have been designed but aren't. You are both simply reiterating your unscientific beliefs.