Bacterial motors carefully studied (Introduction)

by dhw, Monday, April 11, 2016, 13:26 (3148 days ago) @ David Turell

Dhw: We need to be clear about evidence for what. The complexity of the cell is mind-boggling, and it is fair enough to break it down to its individual components in order to emphasize just how mind-boggling it is. ... But that is not the subject we have been discussing, which is the question of how speciation takes place. ... The complexity of the process provides no “evidence” for your hypothetical explanation (preprogramming and/or dabbling) or for mine (an autonomous IM, possibly God-given).-DAVID: But in my mind it does. First, are the advances at random or with purpose? Can you pick one? Or do you find a third choice? I don't. If you don't accept chance advances, and you've said you don't, what else is there but purpose and design. Once that issue is settled the complexity of advances (try whales again) requires planning. Complex planning which only minds can do. Read about whales if you don't believe me.-I do reject chance, and I accept purpose and design, but that is the whole point of my hypothesis: that instead of design being “guided” by God, it is carried out by autonomous, intelligent cell communities (perhaps invented by God), and the purpose is self-improvement, not the production and feeding of humans. Every new organ required - past tense, because we have not witnessed innovations ourselves - not only inventiveness but also the cooperation of all the other cell communities in the organism in which the innovation took place. That would also be the case if your God preprogrammed or dabbled. I agree that only minds could do it, and so the question is: do cells have minds? Not human minds, but cell minds that are sentient, cognitive, communicative, cooperative, and capable of taking decisions. You say no, and others say yes. Even the yes, however, does not guarantee that those cell minds are capable of such complex innovations. I have never denied the problem of complexity. That is why my hypothesis is just that - a hypothesis, and not a belief. -dhw: But since yours goes so far as to demand God's active participation even in matters of lifestyle (the monarch) and natural wonders (the weaverbird's nest) - regardless of cellular complexity, and apparently all for the sake of humans - it is not just a matter of "evidence". I simply find my hypothesis more cohesive than yours!
DAVID: The things in the above paragraph that disturb you are extrapolations of mine from the basic observations about speciation problems. You've invented an IM that glosses over all of these considerations.-The complexity is the consideration, as above, but your “large organisms chauvinism” will not even allow the monarch or the weaverbird the intelligence to devise their own lifestyle or design their own nest. Instead, God must plan everything, and we had better “gloss over” the claim that all such lifestyles and wonders are somehow linked to the production or feeding of humans. Both our hypotheses come up against questions they cannot answer, and there is no “evidence” for divine preprogramming or dabbling or autonomous cell communities producing innovations. But at least my proposal offers a cohesive explanation of the higgledy-piggledy history of evolution.