Cell response to electric field (Introduction)

by dhw, Sunday, April 21, 2013, 14:49 (4235 days ago) @ David Turell

Dhw: ...how do you know that the human bush was planned and preprogrammed and the rest was not?-DAVID: I don't know for sure, obviously. The evidence of leaving the trees, when not necessary suggests a built-in program.
 
Maybe it WAS necessary under certain local conditions. Anyway, your "evidence" means that any innovation that was not "necessary" (i.e. essential for survival) suggests a built-in programme. Since early organisms managed and have survived perfectly well without eyes, livers, lungs etc., we must therefore assume that all our fellow animals were part of a built-in programme, but you believe they were not (viz. the whale and the brontosaurus). Only humans were. With no criteria by which to distinguish between what was and what wasn't preprogrammed, your anthropocentric evolutionary hypothesis hangs on nothing but a strand of faith. (However, see our next exchange.)-DAVID: If you can accept, as I do, that a brilliant mind created a multilayered code filled with intelligent information, then a preprogrammed evolution is entirely possible. This is a directed evolution that responds to environmental changes with a multitude of attempts to advance the complexity of life. Thus the bush with 'natures wonders'. This is theistic evolution, process theology at its core.-The question is WHAT is preprogrammed, and you are trying to combine two very different arguments. One is that humans were preprogrammed from the beginning, and the other is that God invented a mechanism to experiment with "a multitude of attempts to advance the complexity of life". The latter leads to the higgledy-piggledy bush which you are saying here was directed to be higgledy-piggledy ... i.e. there was no single ultimate purpose (humans) but only diversity. That makes much more sense to me than your anthropocentric preprogramming plus a colossal range of "byproducts".
 
DAVID: If the genome is completely automatic it does not have intelligence in its own right.-Obviously. We are discussing whether it IS completely automatic.-DAVID: If we live long enough for the scientific elucidation of the complete story of the genome, my viewpoint will be verified. Barbara M is right to ask for that study of cellular self-knowledge. My prediction is that there will be no self-knowledge. Negative results are just as important as positive ones in the study of the genome.-Dawkins makes similar predictions about his own theories. But I suggest that it is too soon to claim, as you keep doing, that the cell IS an automaton. I'm glad you've now reduced your authoritative statements to the status of a prediction.
 
DAVID: I am open-minded. Quantum energy is interconnected throughout the universe and our minds certainly affect our bodies in many ways. Some obvious as nerve controls, hormone controls, but we are not sure how placebos work. What you keep ignoring is the theory that our brain reacts as a receiver for consciousness, which is individual and also universal. I ascribe to that theory because of the inferences from NDE's.-We know that the body affects the mind, and the mind the body, but that is not what I'm talking about at all. In my hypothesis, I AM arguing that the brain may be a receiver! If the soul survives our materials, then all our thoughts, memories, imaginings, emotions must be energy and not materials, and it's the intelligent energy within the skull that sends messages to the brain. By analogy, in my panpsychic hypothesis, I'm suggesting that innovations may be caused by the intelligent energy in the cell sending messages to the chemicals.-DAVID: Your nebulous third way is just a cloud of obfuscation. I want you to be clear-headed.-And I appreciate your efforts! You are quite right that this panpsychist hypothesis is a cloud of obfuscation, which is the very nature of all attempts to explain the mystery of our existence and our consciousness. That is why I consider my hypothesis neither more nor less credible than the head-in-the-clouds faith of the theist and the head-in-the-sand faith of the atheist.