Evolution v Creationism: guided evolution? dhw? (Evolution)

by dhw, Wednesday, April 08, 2015, 12:39 (3515 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: You do not seem to distinguish between what is clearly automatic (perception of information through the equivalent of the senses) and individual cognition (the processing and use of such information) which is NOT clearly automatic.
DAVID: It is clearly automatic to me and is demonstrated that way in the research. Your so-called cognition is the molecular response to stimuli, which stimuli are received by molecules. Molecules with a cortex? No, one molecule triggers another in series. All of life is like this except our consciousness and free will.-No-one claims that individual molecules have a brain! As you know perfectly well, the argument is that cells/cell communities have a brain equivalent which coordinates all the molecular activity. As for your final sentence, Shapiro says: “Large organisms chauvinism, we like to think that only we can do things in a cognitive way.” (See also “Quorum sensing”)-DAVID: Please remember, we have no idea if an IM even exists. -Please remember, we have no idea if God even exists.-DAVID: We do see epigenetic alterations that are responsive to changes, and that is probably what the IM is. It implies any major change is environmentally dependent. -I have no doubt that major changes are environmentally dependent. An autonomous IM would adapt to or exploit new conditions.
 
DAVID: Cells have a list of responses to choose from depending on the type and strength of stimuli. All automatic.
dhw: So 3.7 billion years ago, your God gave the first cells a list of possible responses to every future change in the environment, to be passed on through zillions of organisms so that 1% could automatically adapt and innovate, while 99% were preprogrammed to make the wrong choice (automatically) when certain changes took place. This particular human mind boggles.-DAVID: It should boggle. Your reasoning is wrong. There is no reason for multicellularity or for any change from just bacteria. -We have always agreed on this. An autonomous inventive mechanism would explain the change. Some single cells remained single while others merged to launch multicellularity. -DAVID: Your concept that those single cell guys knew everything from the beginning is not reasonable. I assume the multi forms got a further input of instructions as they had to do more complex forms of living. Only simple logic.-This is a travesty! You have reversed my concept! My single cell guys did NOT know everything from the beginning. That is the whole point. They cooperated, and as the environment changed, so they adapted or innovated (or died). Hence the higgledy-piggledy extinctions, weird forms and lifestyles of evolution. It is you who had the little guys preprogrammed from the beginning with every conceivable adaptation and innovation, and your alternative was divine dabbling (now called “a further input of instructions...”), apparently supplemented by a list of options for cells to choose from. So did God preprogramme the weaverbird's nest in the first living cells, dabble, or let the weaverbird automatically choose one nest-plan from an inherited or newly presented list? Come to think of it, what is the point of a list to choose from if the very process of choosing is “all automatic”? Curiouser and curiouser.