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

by David Turell , Saturday, November 24, 2018, 17:51 (1977 days ago) @ dhw

If anyone is still interested in this discussion, please reread my post from yesterday, which answers all the points David has raised below. I’ll try to keep today’s answers shorter.

DAVID: What you have again ignored is the obvious requirement for complex design to make the required changes. We know organisms can initiate their own minor adaptations.

dhw: From yesterday, referring back to the day before: Again you have ignored what I bolded last time: I have always accepted that my hypothesis, like your own, is unproven: nobody knows the extent to which adaptation to new conditions may lead to the major, more complex changes required for speciation. That is why, like your own, my hypothesis remains a hypothesis.
Yes, the changes require complex design, and nobody knows how this takes place. We only have unproven hypotheses, including yours and mine.

Yes, both unproven, but I take it one logical step further: complex designs to cross the gaps in the fossil record require the mentation given by a designing mind. Adaptation produces small steps, nothing more, and these are seen, but nothing more on the way to new species

DAVID: The fossil gaps in the records support only punctuated equilibrium with major advances which require design. Logically only a mind can design to that required degree.

dhw: You know that I accept punctuated equilibrium and the need for design. You have no evidence that “logically only a mind can do the designing” if by “a mind” you mean your God. Look at your many ant articles. “Logically” – I’ll keep my theist hat on – it is perfectly possible that your God designed the mechanisms that enable ants and all other organisms to do their own designing, whether external or internal.

I've agreed that is possible, but all it does is keep God in control if he mechanisms hav e guidelines.

dhw: Under “The newly found bacterial role”:
QUOTE: "Proponents of this hologenomic concept of evolution argue that if there is a fidelity across generations between hosts and microbes, then the holobiont embodies a coming together of numerous, disparate evolutionary lineages into a singular being, a coalition of many that contributes to the functional integrity of the whole.” (dhw’s bold)

DAVID: […] They create immediate adaptations, for example, in digestion, but it is certainly obvious they do not design giant changes.

dhw: The section I have bolded seems to emphasize the process of emergence, whereby the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. (See also my post concerning ants and corvids). This essentially is the basis of my proposal that cells pool their intelligence, but I had never thought of bacteria as members of the same team. It makes perfect sense, though. As to whether these teams are or are not capable of designing giant changes, that is the hypothesis you refuse to consider, but to my mind it is certainly not “certainly obvious” that such “coalitions” might explain innovations (giant changes) as well as adaptations (minor changes).

My objection, as always, is that it takes mental planning to create advanced designs as required by the gaps in the fossil record.