Biological complexity:how toxoplasmosis parasitizes (Introduction)

by dhw, Sunday, December 04, 2016, 12:23 (2694 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Primarily there are only two choices, chance development or design of the complexity.
dhw: Again you are fudging the issue. WHICH complexity – the complexity of the cell, or the complexities of evolutionary innovations?
DAVID: No fudging. The complexities of bacteria are not the same as animals with nucleated cells.

Nobody is saying they are. The point of all this research is that cells/cell communities are intelligent, not that they are all the same!

DAVID: This is the origins of life aspect of evolution you keep dodging as part of the continuum of living evolution.

No dodging. Nobody knows the ORIGIN, and your God designing the first intelligent cells is one option.

DAVID: You use demonstrated intelligent activity of bacteria to justify your hypothesis that a committee of cells can understand this project and work it out. And yet the possibility of bacterial intelligence is a 50/50 proposition: either they can act intelligently or they follow intelligent instructions they contain, and no one on Earth can tell the difference, me or especially Shapiro. Did you really look at the diagrams of the pores? I come from a view of incredulity. Aren't you incredulous?

Yes, and yes. That is why I accept the possibility of a God who designed the cell in the first place. However, if the chances of the cell/cell community being intelligent are 50/50, we have good reason not to reject the hypothesis, which is your stance. I do not expect you to believe it, but what happened to open-mindedness? Outright rejection of a 50/50 hypothesis is prejudice, not science.

DAVID: Come on, having God give them intelligence and possible dabbling, is bringing God back into the picture. There is only chance or design! You can't escape it!

Once again, you are conflating issues. Of course God is in the picture, and so is chance. I am a 50/50 agnostic, and find both hypotheses equally difficult to believe. That is why I leave open the question of the ORIGIN of the intelligent cell. Once again, that has no bearing on the question of whether evolution is the result of God’s total control, planning, preprogramming and dabbling, or is a free-for-all, possibly designed as such by your God.

DAVID: I've agreed God may have provided them with an inventive mechanism.
dhw: There is no agreement between us on this, because you insist that the mechanism for invention is always guided by God. My hypothesis depends on it being autonomous. An inventor is not someone who obeys instructions.
DAVID: Cells with God's inventiveness on board is still design: God's activity. How agnostic are you, really? Is chance out the window?

We are not arguing about design. We are arguing about what does the designing/ inventing. I say Frank Whittle designed/invented the jet engine. Perhaps you will agree. I say the weaverbird designed/invented the weaverbird’s nest. You disagree and say God designed/invented it.

I am 50/50 agnostic. I do not believe in God or in chance. I do not disbelieve in God or in chance.