Life's biologic complexity: Automatic molecular actions (Introduction)

by dhw, Thursday, December 08, 2016, 10:45 (2907 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: …There is no evidence for the Darwin thesis that there is a competition with other species or with environmental conditions. Extinctions are just that. The species cannot adapt, but with minor changes then can adapt. But that does not mean it is a road to new species.

I don't know why you've suddenly switched from complexity to competition! Anyway, I don't follow your reasoning. You tell us how in New Zealand the introduction of non-native species has caused havoc to native species. No competition? How can extinctions be caused by environmental conditions, but there's no evidence for “competition” with environmental conditions? And I've agreed a thousand times that adaptation does not prove the power to innovate. However, it does prove there's an autonomous mechanism for small changes, unless your God preprogrammes every adaptation as well as every innovation. That's a basis for my hypothesis.

DAVID: Oxygen may have allowed the Cambrian explosion, but didn't demand the appearance of those very complex animals out of nothing that lived previously.

That is why I suggest that evolution advances through the quest for improvement as well as survival. The increase in oxygen may have offered new opportunities. Not demand. Opportunity.

DAVID: Punc Eq requires that species are isolated and in isolation decide to change, nothing more. It is thin specious thinking, an excuse for change that doesn't hold water.

If you accept common descent, innovations take place in individual organisms, so of course they take place locally – except where there is convergent evolution. Very few environmental changes affect the whole globe simultaneously. Do you think every region on Earth was suddenly populated by the same new species? And what is “specious” about claiming that organisms exploit new opportunities? You believe that too – but you think they were preprogrammed to do so.

dhw: We KNOW that organisms can change their genome in order to adapt. That is not advance planning, it is a reaction. What we don’t know is whether they can make the more complex changes involved in innovation. But it is a possibility that they can.
DAVID: Yes it is a possibility, but large changes, as in speciation require complex planning for the changes to occur in a coordinated fashion.

Thank you for agreeing it is possible that cell communities cooperate to create the complexities of innovation.

dhw: Maybe pre-whales found that food was more plentiful in the water than on the land.
DAVID: Very logical to have land animals just become aquatic instead of migrating as most animals do all the time to follow the food. Just involving the huge requirements for physiological changes to become aquatic defies logic. Why did God allow it? He created a evolutionary plan with a drive for complexity.

Migration means travel into the unknown. Maybe the water was more convenient for Willy Wannerbe Whale, or fish were easier to catch than rabbits, and he enjoyed being in the water. What are you suggesting? Pre-whales should have migrated, but God said: “No, thou shalt go into the water so that thou shalt become more complex for the sake of complexity.”

DAVID: Humans are the current complex endpoint of evolution, but life is made up of many evolutionary branches of a balance of nature in evolution so life has energy to proceed. Whales are one branch in their own niche as top predators.

Yes, life goes on, without or without humans. I know life is made up of many evolutionary branches, and have spent years asking you why your God had to preprogramme or dabble them all if his aim was to produce humans. You admit you don’t understand it. Maybe your hypothesis is wrong.

Dhw: We judge intelligence by watching behaviour, not by watching molecules.
DAVID: If those molecules automatically follow intelligent interaction it can all be planned activity.

If these molecules automatically follow intelligent instructions, their actions can be the result of autonomous planning by the cell community, just as you believe human molecules automatically follow the instructions given by your autonomously intelligent mind. 50/50.

DAVID: I start with the observation above that first life had to have information to run on. Isn't DNA an intricate code? That is information which cannot develop by chance on a rocky planet.
dhw: A very good argument concerning the origin of life and the evolutionary mechanism. But you have a separate theory about how evolution has proceeded, and you claim that in each area of thought your theories follow “the known research findings”...
DAVID: It is not separate. Initial intelligent information started life and conducted the process of evolution. All one plan. Origin of life and origin of species is all one and the same mechanism.

Already agreed in my comment.

DAVID: …I've never said the 3.8 billion year program is scientifically proven. What we know strongly suggests it.

Not agreed. You say your separate theories are based on “known research findings”. The separate theory I'm challenging is that all innovations and natural wonders were preprogrammed 3.8 billion years ago or were divinely dabbled. What known research findings support this theory?