Biological complexity: protozoa sans mitochondria (Introduction)

by dhw, Friday, May 20, 2016, 13:17 (3109 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Quoting me does not demonstrate that you fully understand my concept: IF organisms are given a 'complexifier mechanism' it will be under God's guidance controls. 
dhw: I asked you (under “algae”) to make a choice: did God guide all the complexifications or did organisms work them out autonomously apart from when he occasionally dabbled. Here is your reply: “I've agreed that God might have implanted a phenotype complexifier mechanism which operated on its own but under his watchful eye.” What does “on its own” mean, if not autonomously? And watching is not guiding. 

DAVID: I assume you know my thinking. I can envision an automatic mechanism that starts a complexity, but if God doesn't approve, he watches and then corrects the course. It is what I have always meant by 'semi-automatic'. I forget you are the English Professor and I am sometimes sloppy in my descriptions.-I hope, hope, hope that you are being sloppy here too and accidentally misreading the above. There is a polar distance between automatic and autonomous. You have always used the word ‘semi-autonomous', and if that is what you mean, we are in business together. If, however, you really mean automatic (i.e. robot-like, following implanted instructions), I shall have to ask which half of the mechanism is NOT automatic and what the non-automatic half actually does, and especially why God might disapprove of a complexity he was responsible for starting.
 
I will now try to formulate the implications of ‘semi-autonomous', if that's what you meant. You would then accept that organisms are possessed of an inventive mechanism (aka phenotype complexification mechanism), which ‘on its own' (autonomously) begins and implements every evolutionary innovation. So when the pre-giraffe starts lengthening its neck and the pre-whale starts adapting itself to the water, God approves and watches them carry on doing their own thing. He may possibly have to step in (this is the non-autonomous bit) if the male protogiraffes kill each other with one bash of the two skulls, or the protowhales drown, i.e. they are making a mess of their ‘complexities', but it is also possible that their autonomous IM makes the adjustments itself. So God allows the autonomous IM to take evolution in whatever direction it pleases, and we can only assume that he approves of the millions of species and variations that come and go (including what you have mysteriously described as “aberrant” and “side channel”), though perhaps he occasionally steps in, e.g. to throw down an asteroid to get rid of the dinosaurs, or to make adjustments to certain apes so that they become human. Otherwise the balance of nature is also left to the organisms themselves, with God watching. We don't know to what extent the all-important environmental changes are left to chance or are also the result of dabbles, but in any case, it is still the autonomous IM that dictates what happens next.-If this summary is accurate, it has major implications for the rest of our discussion, so I'd better stop here to see if I've got it right. I shan't reply to your post on “Weird animal forms”, as that too will depend on the accuracy of the above.