Cell response to electric field (Introduction)

by dhw, Wednesday, April 24, 2013, 16:52 (4232 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Not true! The science of evolution expressly shows that the genome is an automaton. The atheists depend on this viewpoint. Otherwise they have to identify the source of the intelligent information in the code. The code simply invented itself by chance(!), no source (God) of intelligent information required.-Dhw: Neither the theist nor the atheist hypothesis need depend on the genome being an automaton. The theist can argue that his God invented a mechanism that could act intelligently and independently (as we humans think we do). The atheist can argue that this same mechanism was assembled through cooperation between materials after non-conscious energy had become aware of itself through changes in the materials it had produced and in which it was embedded.-DAVID: You do not answer my point: DNA is a digital code, and the atheists avoid any discussion of the fact that the information contained therein has to have a source. Our experience in life says that all codes require intelligence. Now you want to protect the atheists by siding with the idea that chance created that intricate mechanism in DNA.-The context here is your claim that the genome is an automaton, and you said explicitly that atheists depended on this viewpoint. My post offers an ALTERNATIVE to atheistic chance, which is the "intelligent cell" engaged in deliberate and purposeful cooperation, along the lines described by the researchers at Rice University, Tel Aviv University, and Harvard Medical School. (The theory that DNA evolved from the simpler RNA could suggest ongoing internal experimentation, as cells gathered more and more information.) This concept, like evolution, can fit in with both theist and atheist scenarios, but before you howl with disbelief, please see my own conclusion below.-DAVID: Don't invent theist arguments, they already have the telling point, the origin for the source of the information cannot be chance.
 -How can "God invented a mechanism that could act intelligently and independently" be construed as attributing the source to chance? Why do you call this argument a theistic "invention" when you keep telling us that God invented DNA?-DAVID: And non-conscious energy flows everyday through your house wires, but I'm sure you have not noticed any changes occurring automatically or purposely.Perhaps non-conscious energy is causing global warming. After all we are surrounded by non-conscious energy all our lives. You make non-conscious energy seem brilliant.-I'm not sure what you're getting at here. We're grappling with two questions: 1) how can we distinguish between non-conscious and conscious? 2) What is the origin of consciousness? As regards 1), you have drawn fixed lines, and have provided articles by chosen scientists to support your opinion, only to find that they do not. As regards 2), I'm afraid none of the hypotheses (it has always been there, it arose by chance, it evolved) have any basis in the reality we perceive. That is why the acceptance of any one of these unlikely explanations can only be based on faith and not on science.