Evolution and humans: our feet are special (Evolution)

by dhw, Wednesday, October 17, 2018, 10:52 (2227 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Please, my meaning is that a whole organism is created with necessarily cooperating cells in order to live and survive. 'With' is not 'by '. The whole is a result of cooperating cells. Cells cannot create newly designed biologic forms which is the personal hypothesis you keep trying to defend.

Here is the relevant exchange:

dhw: The (theistic) choice here is between your God preprogramming/dabbling the cooperation that enabled them to evolve, or your God giving them the wherewithal to organize their own cooperation, so please don’t tell me the whole is not created by cooperating cells.

DAVID: I would offer a slightly different concept: the whole is created by cells that are designed to cooperate.

You then changed your own “by” to “with”, but it makes no difference. You are now simply reiterating your blanket refusal to consider the possibility that your God might have designed an autonomous inventive mechanism with which organisms organize their own cooperation, even though later you agreed that all the hypotheses were possible “thru God”. Please let’s move on.

DAVID: Sorry but I still consider it [cellular intelligence] as pure magic.

dhw: So if your God designed unproven inventive cellular intelligence it would be “pure magic”, whereas if your God designed an unproven computer programme and/or personally dabbled (unproven) every innovation in the history of life, that would be what? Pure science?

DAVID: I've not invented a 'magical' God the concept has been around long before I arrived. Based on the designs I see in biology, He is a necessary being.

I did not say you invented God! You dismiss as “pure magic” the hypothesis that your God may have designed autonomous cellular intelligence, so I asked how you would describe your God’s hypothetical computer programme or dabbling of every innovation in the history of life. Once more: why is my hypothesis more “magical” than yours?

DAVID (under “Immunity: gene controls"): What cannot be avoided is logic about cells. Either they are intelligently designed to have intelligent responses to stress and stimuli or somehow or other they have their own form of intelligence and use it. Either Shapiro or I am correct, as only those two presumptions are operational. My choice is obvious. "Guiding intelligence" can certainly be implanted intelligent instructions for proper automatic responses to the few stimuli bacteria receive.

My point was to stop you from summarizing Shapiro’s work and coupling it with your own conclusion, which is diametrically opposed to his. This can be summed up as: “cells are intelligent agents that direct their own development”. You are absolutely right that these are the only two options, and I find it astonishing that you are not even prepared to consider the opinions of Shapiro, McClintock, Margulis, Buehler, all of whom spent a lifetime studying the behaviour of cells.