An inventive mechanism (Evolution)

by David Turell , Tuesday, September 09, 2014, 00:59 (3727 days ago) @ dhw

Tony, September 08, 2014, 21:13 : Cellular communication does NOT mean cellular planning, however, and that communication is very, very limited. Special creation/pre-planning solves this problem neatly because the intelligence behind the creation can plan.-This is the key point that Tony and I keep pounding. One major issue is a definition of "cellular communities" (CC's) needs to be carefully delineated and your use of it seems amorphous to me. As an example, if a primitive kidney needs to add a new function, do the kidney community cells do the planning? You have rejected chance so trial cannot be the method for your cells. Or by CC's do you intend to mean whole organisms with all their organs and brains? We know that whole guppies can change size when necessary. Can they change their kidneys by themselves. I doubt it.-> dhw, September 08, 2014, 12:15: David has described in intricate detail the immense complexity of the organic chemistry of life. Thank you for this highly educational post. As always, it makes a mockery of hypothesis 1...... Your main aim, however, seems to be to discredit 6. As an evolutionist, you do not doubt that the innovations happened, but you believe they were preprogrammed into the very first cells (4) or progressively directed by God (5)-Yes, I was severely discrediting 6. And I think epigenetic mechanisms can make some modifications, probably fairly minimal. I still hope an inventive or more complex modification mechanism will be found to get me out of my dilemma, but it all may be up to God all the time.-> dhw:you categorically reject the possibility that God could have programmed cellular communities to make the changes on their own initiative (6).
>In order to clarify this, I would like to go back, not to an innovation, but to one of Nature's Wonders which I love to use as an analogy. Fire ants cooperate to make themselves into a floating raft, which enables them to survive floods. -Not clumps of cells. I use instinct of whole animals. These comments bring up the need for another clarification. What is instinctual behavior and how does it happen? I put the rafting of ants at the instinct level. It has to be with learned patterns of behavior from living experience, much like we train dogs to be housebroken and baby horses from losing their fear of us. My theory about instinct is that when the pattern is learned over and over, eventually brain plasticity allows it to stick, and it is somehow put into the neuron's DNA as instinct. This actually is the general theory of how it works.-So, ants live on the ground; they get flooded over and over; ants are a cooperative society, and while swimming around several of them try to save each other and while they are clinging together they discover they float easily. They have brains and learn by experience.-On the other hand an isolated organ cell community without a planning brain can do almost nothing. For much of evolution the huge jumps in complexity, which you fully recognize, require planning from a brain or a consciousness. Back to the need for God.-> dhw: I was also fascinated by your reference to a man born without a corpus callosum in his brain.
 
Easy answer: God gave our brains plasticity. We know that. Many young children who have their brain separated like this fellow, to cure severe epilepsy, often function perfectly well. The same is true of some children born with a shell of the brain, can function at high levels of IQ.