Biological complexity: how the cell proteasome works (Introduction)

by dhw, Saturday, May 06, 2017, 10:47 (2759 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Intelligence had to appear in the first cells.

dhw: Of course it did, and in my hypothesis I allow for your “God” having implanted the intelligence that drives it. (But see below and under “Information”.)

DAVID: Intelligence is immaterial and requires thoughtful planning to be useful in having evolution progress from simple single celled to complex multicellular, granting that the initial cells are highly complex to begin with. I simply accept that God supplied the intelligence from the beginning.

dhw: “Accept” is the wrong word. That is what you believe, but you have ignored everything else I have said in my post about the term “God”. Whatever supplied the intelligence from the beginning is an unknown force.

DAVID: At least you admit there has to be a 'force' to supply the intelligence. That is a beginning of what that force might be. Is it in and of itself intelligent? Does it supply raw undeveloped intelligence as in an infant? Can it plan?

Yes, these are the questions we ask and can never answer. Under “Genome complexity” you wrote that “all forms are descended from earlier forms by a totally unknown process”, and the same can be said of whatever force brought life into existence: it is totally unknown. That is why we continue to ask questions and examine the different answers to see whether they make sense or not. To a certain extent, all of them do, which is why different people adhere to different hypotheses. But eventually all of them reach a dead end where they cease to make sense. Some folk can then close their eyes to the senselessness and make a leap of faith, which boils down to choosing between god(s), chance and a nebulous form of panpsychism as the unknown force that originated life, evolution and intelligence. Other folk keep their eyes open and sit on the fence. In ludic terms, the latter - including me, of course - can’t win, but unless there is a life beyond this life in which all will be revealed (who knows?), I suspect there is no possibility of us ever knowing the result!