Biological complexity: more cell pore complexity (Introduction)

by dhw, Saturday, May 07, 2016, 11:39 (3123 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Why not just accept the notion that the process of life includes enormous inventiveness, once multicellularity appears. God can plan for humans while the forms of life explode in all directions around the main thrust of His purpose. All analysis must include a look at possible purpose. that cannot be excluded. -We agree on the enormous inventiveness, but not on how and why it might have come about. There is a huge gulf between planning evolution for the sake of humans and individually designing an explosion of organisms, lifestyles and natural wonders that have no conceivable connection with humans - to the extent that approx. 99% have now disappeared. The need for the weaverbird's nest to “balance nature” for humans is what I'd call a “tortured conjecture” (see below). As regards an overall divine purpose, you have told us yours (to create humans), but when I suggest an alternative (experiment, entertainment, curiosity, relief of boredom), you tell me not to try and read God's mind. How do you gauge purpose without reading the mind? As regards a purpose behind the drive for complexity, you have again rejected my alternative, which is the drive for survival and improvement.-dhw: The discovery that so many scientists believe in cellular intelligence seems to me to offer a possible explanation for the higgledy-piggledy course of evolution.

DAVID: 'So many' is really how many? Just a few are always listed. And that cell intelligence can simply be automaticity seen from outside the cell. When 'inside' the processes are always simple molecular processes and often feedback loops.-I am in no position to conduct a census, but after McClintock and Margulis, we keep coming across others like Bühler, Shapiro and Lipton, and there's a whole raft of entries on Google under “bacterial/microbial intelligence” if you really want to follow it up. I may as well ask you how many scientists believe in divine preprogramming or personal intervention for every innovation, lifestyle and natural wonder in evolutionary history.
 
DAVID: […} I can see you continuing to seek an alternative to chance or design, while I see no alternative, and frankly I have not seen you present an alternative that is reasonable to me. From my viewpoint I see your conjectures as tortured. We are a gulf apart.-On the subject of evolution, there is indeed a gulf: once again, my explanation is NOT an alternative to design (or to your God). It is an alternative to your personal interpretation of evolution and your God's purpose. But in terms of God's existence, I accept all your arguments relating to complexity, and your posts - as well as your books - on this and other related subjects have been an ongoing education for me, for which I shall always be grateful. So there are still plenty of bridges, even if they only take me halfway across the theist-atheist gulf!