Natures wonders: Cellular intelligence derailed? (Introduction)

by dhw, Tuesday, December 17, 2013, 19:42 (3992 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: We now know that protein production and transcription controls and modifications are part of two layered codes in DNA; first the simple one of 50-60 years ago, and now the second complex planning layer which helps organize single proteins into complex organs. There has to be an organizing plan controlling all of this from the beginning.-Woese, whom you recommended so highly, speculates on the evolution of the cell: It is NOT a machine, evolution is a bumpy road with unpredictable outcomes, we have yet to fathom how the novelty of the proteinaceous cell was generated, but the cell evolved from many starting points through a shotgun strategy, as opposed to a rifle. Where in all this is there an organizing plan? Why don't Margulis, Shapiro, Albrecht-Buehler & Co tell us about God's plans, instead of insisting that cells are "intelligent" in their own right? -dhw: (to Tony) Only humans and to a lesser degree some of our fellow animals have the self-awareness that makes them question what is good for the community ... but that doesn't mean that other organisms don't need intelligence to work out what is good, or to implement the strategies.
DAVID: How do cells recognize what is good for the community? That is an amorphous suggestion. Tell me how it works.-Are you saying your own cells don't recognize what is good for your body? If there was no such recognition, organisms would not survive! How does it work? Tell me how any form of intelligence works. You know as well as I do that we have no answer.-Dhw [to Tony]: I'd have thought cancerous cells might represent the sort of "dissent" you're talking about. Would you argue that your God preprogrammed such "dissent"? After all, according to you and David, cells are automatons obeying his instructions.
DAVID: No, cancer cells manage to escape the tight controls that supervise the constant turn over of living cells. [...] The escape can be due to virus, to irritation, and even to faulting genes that allow it. not preprogramming.-So the cancer cells are not preprogrammed to "dissent"? And yet when cells resist viruses and outside irritants, or adapt to new dangers, they have been preprogrammed by your God to do so. It's only when they fail to resist or adapt that the hypothesis of God's preprogramming sort of falls by the wayside. In other words, he preprogrammes whatever works, but whatever doesn't work is just...well...bad luck?-Here's a different hypothesis: evolution is a history of constant improvisation and experimentation, as intelligent cells and cell communities respond in a vast variety of ways to ever changing challenges from the world in which they live ... adapting, innovating, creating new lifestyles and strategies. Many of them fail, and organisms therefore come and go via the process we know as Natural Selection. Theistic slant: God created the intelligent cell.