horizontal gene transfer: the real IM? (Introduction)

by David Turell , Tuesday, December 16, 2014, 00:35 (3630 days ago) @ dhw


> dhw: You could hardly have a clearer confirmation of the idea that innovations are caused by cooperation between the inventive mechanisms of different cells/cell communities. The “instantaneous” reference offers an obvious explanation for the lack of so-called transitional forms, and is especially significant for the Cambrian Explosion.-Agreed. At issue is the source of the horizontal transfer mechanism (HTM). It occurs, but how did it start, and is it a mechanism coded into the original DNA coding when life started? We do not know the answer, so we are left with: did HTM appear de novo through cellular invention or was it set in place in advance?-
> dhw: Such a process would clearly have led to the higgledy-piggledy bush which is such a problem for your anthropocentrism.-The h-p bush is your problem not mine. Please think for yourself, as I think the drive for humans to appear is perfectly compatible with the bush of life, as I have previously explained many times citing the balance of nature being a natural and also required condition for life in general. 
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> dhw: QUOTE: “We did not invent gene transfer; DNA did. Genes are concerned with only one thing above all: self-perpetuation [...] Species barriers might protect the integrity of a genome as a whole, but when an individual gene has a chance to advance itself by breaking those boundaries, it will not hesitate.”-Nice atheistic quote. Perhaps God invented DNA? Sounds like Dawkins.
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> dhw: You can still hold onto the fact that this whole mechanism is too complex to have arisen by chance, but if you accept these observations, I don't see how you can continue to cling to the idea that the unbridled zeal with which cells form new combinations coincides with your God's meticulous planning of a path leading from bacteria to humans. -As stated above, the whole arrangement can have come from God's planning.
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> BBELLA: I can see Sheldrake‘s morphic field and the holographic universe fitting well with the above information. Like minds coming from different angles (with words) toward the same information/images.
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> dhw: I'd be interested to know the extent to which you see morphic fields and the holographic universe fitting in with the panpsychist hypothesis that all things have their own form of “quasi-consciousness” or “intelligence” (inverted commas, because this should not be equated with human consciousness and intelligence).-I accept Sheldrake's human consciousness work, having studied his findings, but his morphic fields as well as holographic universe theories are just proposals, without any basis in study. And yes, cells under the guidance of their genomes do appear to act intelligently, or perhaps they have been intelligently planned to act that way.