Biological complexity: protozoa sans mitochondria (Introduction)

by dhw, Saturday, May 21, 2016, 11:09 (3109 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: 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.-DAVID: You don't view God as I do, even when you put on your theistic hat. First point is that He always uses an evolutionary process for the universe and for life. Secondly, He controls. He may well control the environmental changes as well as the evolutionary processes. You are right, I am sloppy in the way I write about it. I can imagine an IM which is somewhat pre-programmed, starts complexification automatically. It may or may not be a response to stress, or simply a timed drive to complexity. God dabbles if He doesn't like how things are going. All of this is because we do not know how speciation is accomplished. Again it is the dilemma of pre-programming or dabbling or both.-Ah well, square one it is. You have often commented on my vivid imagination, but it lags far behind yours. I simply cannot imagine your God supplying the first cells with programmes to pass on through billions of years and organisms for every single “complexification” in the history of evolution (= preprogramming). Or even constantly dabbling to add twiddly bits (complexities) just for the sake of adding twiddly bits. Nor can I imagine each of these countless “complexities” being timed (long neck on 21 May Year X) or ready for triggering in response to stress - you have discounted a shortage of food for the long neck, so I wonder what alternative “stress” you can think of. Anyway, why stress? Why not in response to an environmental change that allows for new “complexities”? Nor can I imagine God setting up a programme only to find that he doesn't like how it's working out, so he has to dabble to put right his own blunders. What sort of planning is that? -I note you have qualified pre-programmed with “somewhat”, and re-introduced “semi” (now automatic, but previously autonomous). But if God starts each “complexification” automatically according to his own pre-set programme (or dabbles some of them), and organisms do not have an autonomous inventive mechanism to produce their own “complexities”, I can't imagine any kind of “somewhat” or “semi” that will enable organisms to complexify in a way he doesn't like. Please tell us more.