Biological complexity: one receptor, two T cells (Introduction)

by dhw, Tuesday, August 30, 2016, 11:36 (2789 days ago) @ David Turell

David's comment: Runaway inflammation causes chronic ulcerative colitis or regional enteritis in the small intestine. This research may lead to a cure for them. But the key point here is living tissue must contain feedback loops to stop a beneficial process from overextending itself, just as blood clotting must by confined to the damaged vessel area, not the whole body. And the usual question is how does such a complex arrangement develop itself in a stepwise evolutionary process? The answer is it doesn't. It must develop by saltation, all complete at once when put in place. To think that the cells themselves cooked up such a balanced process stretches credulity.-I agree that all such mechanisms must develop by saltation, and I find that all these complexities in themselves stretch credulity! All the miracles of life, of consciousness, of reproduction, of evolution, of oak trees growing from acorns, of ants building cities, of weaverbirds tying knots, of cell communities cooperating to protect themselves and one another…they are all sources of wonderment. How did they originate? Nobody knows. You explain everything as the work of some unknown, unknowable power with a sourceless mind and boundless power and knowledge, whose very existence stretches credulity. There is NO explanation that does not stretch credulity. But within the explanatory confines of your theism, I personally find my hypothesis - that your God endowed cells/cell communities with a particular type of creative intelligence - at least as likely as your own hypothesis that every single process, innovation and wonder, extant and extinct, was preprogrammed or dabbled directly by himself.