Immunity: Gamma Delta T cells hunt with precision (Introduction)

by dhw, Tuesday, November 20, 2018, 09:21 (2196 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: I never said superficial or flimsy.

dhw:[…] Here are your exact words: “I think your concept of complexity of the cell is superficial since you have not studied biochemistry. This is not meant to criticize you but to indicate that your theorizing is based on a flimsy basis of understanding of what is involved. I hope the Tour quote indicates that to you.” My theorizing, as you know perfectly well, has nothing to do with design but is based on the concept of cellular intelligence, which in turn is based entirely on the magnificent work of “my” scientists. If my concept of cellular intelligence is superficial and flimsy, that can only mean that their concept is superficial and flimsy.

DAVID: A twisted assertion of what I said. You are not in first hand knowledge of biochemistry. You are secondhandedly accepting the opinions of well-known excellent scientists who have simply expressed an interpretation of their studies that you are willing to accept. Other excellent scientists disagree with their interpretations. Interpretations are not fact but a preferred explanation. You have picked a preference. You are, as usual, missing the difference in results and their interpretation.

I have quoted your exact words. Of course my knowledge is second-hand. But if I quote the conclusions of experts, it is absurd to say that because I didn’t do the research myself, the conclusion I quote is superficial and based on a flimsy understanding. At that rate, everything we learn from others is superficial and flimsy! NB: I am NOT stating cellular intelligence as fact. I am using the findings of "excellent scientists" as a basis for a hypothesis concerning the mechanisms of evolution. I offer it as an alternative to your own hypothesis that there is a God who designed every innovation, lifestyle and natural wonder extant and extinct in order to produce humans. Since you have never actually met your God, and I doubt very much whether all your knowledge about innovations, lifestyles and natural wonders extant and extinct is first-hand, would you call your hypothesis superficial and flimsy?

xxxxxx

DAVID: The claim seems to be all the information was there from the beginning and evolution advances from subtraction.

dhw: I would suggest that multicellularity = addition, not subtraction. Why do you think their view is considered heretical?

DAVID: You misunderstand. Behe has a new book on it which I intend to read. Multicellularity is simply a larger organism than single cells. The subtraction, if it occurs, is in DNA, not phenotypes which appear from its work.

dhw: It is not “simply” larger. It involves cells being added to cells. You have called the “devolution” idea heretical. Why? Could it be because it goes against the conventional view that evolution is evolution and not devolution? And are you now saying that parts of bacterial DNA have been subtracted on the way to human DNA?

DAVID: That is what they Are implying.

Perhaps we should drop this subject until you have read Behe’s book. Meanwhile, I’ll stick to the conventional idea that humans resulted from evolution and not devolution.

Under “Junk DNA”:

QUOTE:"These conditions—the accumulation of "junk" DNA, the presence of retrotransposons and their interactions with NHEJ—make the genome more complex. This is one feature that may distinguish advanced organisms, like humans, from simpler ones, like bacteria.”

DAVID’s comment: Once again junk DNA is necessary. This could well explain how advances in evolution were coded into DNA, by simply rearranging DNA, with no need for enlargement. Perhaps this is what ID scientists view as devolution.

If the genome becomes more complex, how does that equate with subtraction and devolution?