Genome complexity: controlling DNA in the cell (Introduction)

by dhw, Friday, November 09, 2018, 12:39 (1995 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: What do you think your guys study except molecular reactions in cells? That is what biological research is at the intracellular level!

dhw: The question does not revolve around molecular reactions but around what DRIVES the molecular reactions! My guys have observed how cells solve problems, and have concluded that the molecular reactions which lead to the solution of the problems are driven by cellular intelligence.

DAVID: But all they can see in studying molecular reactions is those reactions, and assuming a background intelligence, not automaticity in the reactions, thus they must introduce an enormous assumption of a background of active intelligence, when it all can be intelligent design of responses.

I like your “can be”, which chimes in with your earlier “just as well” and your even earlier 50/50. It is not an enormous assumption, it is a rational conclusion they draw from their research, and is certainly no more enormous or unreasonable than your own assumption that the problem-solving, decision-making behaviour of cells/cell communities was preprogrammed 3.8 billion years ago by your God, except when he pops in to do a personal dabble.

DAVID: Do any of your folks think cellular intelligence leads to evolution?

dhw: If you bear in mind that Shapiro is a strong champion of cellular intelligence, I think his concept of natural genetic engineering suggests precisely that:
www.thethirdwayofevolution.com/people/view/james-a-shapiro

QUOTE: "The capacity of living organisms to alter their own heredity is undeniable. Our current ideas about evolution have to incorporate this basic fact of life."
(Evolution: A View from the 21st Century, p.2)

QUOTE: “Shapiro integrates advances in symbiogenesis, epigenetics, and saltationism into a unified approach that views evolutionary change as an active cell process, regulated epigenetically and capable of making rapid large changes by horizontal DNA transfer, inter-specific hybridization, whole genome doubling, symbiogenesis, or massive genome restructuring.”

DAVID: I've carefully read all of this a long time ago, based on his bacterial studies, and have integrated it into my thinking and arguments.

If you have carefully read that living organisms have the capacity to alter their own heredity, that evolutionary change is an active cell process, and that rejection of cellular intelligence is “large organisms chauvinism”, then you have not integrated it into your thinking and arguments but have categorically rejected it.

dhw: Sorry, but your polemic does not lend any credibility to your own hypothesis, whose illogicality you admit by claiming that your God’s logic must be different from ours.

DAVID: How do you logically know God's logic is like ours. I believe in Him but I don't know I know His form of logic must be like mine. You must know Him better than I do.

Neither of us “knows” if your God even exists, let alone how he thinks. However, in the past you have quite rightly argued that the only way we can guess how he thinks is by studying his works. We have both studied his works, and by your own admission, your hypothesis is illogical, while mine is logical. But you reject mine and cling to yours. Why is it more logical for you to believe in your illogical hypothesis than to even consider the possibility that my logical hypothesis might be correct?