Genome complexity: controlling DNA in the cell (Introduction)

by dhw, Wednesday, November 07, 2018, 12:17 (2210 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: More repetition: yes, most of cellular activity is automatic. It ceases to be automatic when the cell/cell community is confronted with new problems. That is how scientists test for intelligence!

DAVID: Which can interpreted, just as well, by recognizing intelligent automatic instructions for all responses.

dhw: So (a) please stop focusing solely on the automatic activities, as if they proved that there is no intelligence in the problem-solving activities, and (b) please recognize that what you have just written acknowledges that the solving of problems can “just as well” be interpreted as evidence that cells/cell communities are autonomously intelligent.

DAVID: All biochemical research shows that molecules act robotically in the series of reactions exposed.

Why have you changed cells/cell communities to molecules? I’m amazed that you think “my” advocates of cellular intelligence, who have spent a lifetime researching the behaviour of cells, have done no research on the behaviour of cells.

DAVID (under “big brain birth canal”: Only neurons can be organized into a mind that can design. Are your 'cells' somehow magically neurons?

dhw: An astonishing statement from someone who claims to be a dualist, and an astonishing assumption which runs counter to your admission that cellular problem-solving can “just as well” be interpreted as automatic – which puts automaticity on a par with the hypothesis that non-neurons can be autonomously intelligent, as advocated by some scientists who have spent a lifetime studying them.

DAVID: The automaticity discussion involves intracellular reactions, not inventing a new pelvis, which is the subject under discussion. Your lifetime group studied cells not major evolutionary changes. Your hypothesis is a huge extrapolation from the single cell reactions to whole body alterations.

Agreed a thousand times over, and that is why it is a hypothesis. But the automaticity discussion is not confined to my extrapolation. It relates to the basis from which I extrapolate my hypothesis – namely, that of cellular intelligence, which you continue to try and dismiss although at the same time you admit to a “just as well” parity of possibilities.

dhw: Your “interpretation” is correct, except that my hypothesis does not include “can only be created by a designing mind” if by that you mean your God. And my hypothesis leaves out your nebulous “with guidelines”, which takes away the all-important autonomy which I suggest has led to the vast variety of life forms. In other words, your God could certainly have provided organisms with an autonomous inventive mechanism for future species in evolution.

DAVID: He is my God. We disagree about how He works. Diversity is needed for balance of nature, and therefore is part of the world God created. Why wouldn't God create the diversity on His own? You are asking for helter skelter creation. It was obviously controlled.

If your God exists, there is no question that diversity is part of the world he created, and the constantly shifting balance of nature must be linked to constantly changing conditions which in turn lead to diversity. But you are right, he is your God, and you can imagine him doing whatever you want him to do: so yes, he could deliberately have created every single life form, lifestyle and natural wonder extant and extinct in the whole history of life, controlling every action by every organism, and probably controlling every change in conditions as well (since the changing balance of nature depends on changing conditions). How all this fits in with his purpose of creating the brain and body of H. sapiens is a mystery, but God’s logic is different from ours so we shouldn’t try to fit the different parts of the hypothesis together. And we shouldn’t consider a different hypothesis whose parts actually do fit together, because…because…? Well, he is your God and you can imagine him doing...etc.