Cell Memories (Identity)

by David Turell , Thursday, August 07, 2014, 02:16 (3542 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: I have emphasized in the same post that “I am interested only in finding a possible explanation for the innovations which have driven evolution from bacteria to humans.” You keep trying to force the issue back to a first cause, but the hypothesis that intelligent cells cooperated to produce innovations does not cover a first cause, any more than Darwin's theory of evolution did.-And I keep telling ou that cells cannot plan such intricacies, unless you can convince me by describing the method the cells use to plan it out. Using the word intelligence over and over agin gets us nowhere except telling me that magically a fuzzy concept of intelligence in cells can produce complex innovation. 
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> DAVID: And are you excluding the issue that it is a logically enormous stretch that cells write their own plans and then follow them. Kidney cells cannot tell liver cells what to do so that the two organs coordinate. 
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> dhw: I have no more idea than you do how the cells managed to combine to form these new organs. I only know that they did. Margulis, Shapiro and Albrecht-Buehler tell us that cells COMMUNICATE. So yes, they may well tell one another what to do - but not in any language that you or I would understand. All organisms - apparently even plants - use their own forms of communication. They could not survive otherwise.-Everything you say is true. But I cannot conceive of a group of fairly primative cells becoming very complex cells in a kidney from their own planning. Shapiro describes simple changes. What your theory forgets is the Cambrian Explosion: whole organisms with complex organ systems appear from no precursors. Punctuated equiibrium is not explained by your theory. The whale series of phenotypes is worth your reviewing. Each of the forms is a huge jump in changes from the last form. No itty-bitty here, which your 'cells theory' requires.-> 
> dhw: However, regarding various hypotheses as a possibility is a good agnostic position. I do wish you'd also consider possible the hypothesis that your God invented an intelligence that could take its own decisions. (Oops, of course you do - but despite Shapiro & Co. you insist that only humans and to a lesser degree some other animals can do that. The rest are automata.)-It's not just decisions, it is planning and pre-planning, remember! Simple decision -making does not create overall plans unless you are an architect. Oops, you want cells to do complex decision-making, I forgot. I agree that cells can make tiny epigenetic modifications, which is what Shapiro shows. Doesn't fill the fossil gaps, does it. You theory has to cover the whole picture, not whistle in the dark past the huge holes in it as your cells can only take tiny steps. -> 
> ME: How did innovations happen? Maybe intelligent cells cooperated to create them. 
> YOU: If so, where did cells get their intelligence from? 
> ME: No idea.
> ****
> YOU: God made innovations happen.
> ME: How did he do it?
> YOU: No idea.
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> dhw: Of course I'm on the picket fence. Up here I don't have to believe in things that you and I have no idea about.-So we grant cells intelligence from 'nowhere' to create very complex biochemical organs, and then we say, since those organs are present and cooperating, some process in evolution must have done it, but chance doesn't work, so lets stop and not conclude anything. It looks like it must all be a miracle. No, you say, that is not right. It infers the supernatural. That is exactly why I prefer theistic evolution. It fills all the holes and confusion for me, although I don't know how HE did it. And I think He is challenging us to figure it out.