Genome complexity: DNA 3-D importance in replication (Introduction)

by dhw, Saturday, January 05, 2019, 12:40 (2151 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: The question is not whether DNA editing happens, but whether your God’s “information/instructions used by the cell” means a specific, 3.8-billion-year-old programme for every single change in the history of evolution, switched on automatically by the cell when conditions require or allow it – which seems to me extremely unlikely – or a mechanism which enables the cell to change itself autonomously, i.e. to devise its own programme as conditions change. Shapiro clearly believes in the latter.

DAVID: The only issue here is I believe God gave the cells that mechanism.

dhw: This may be a red letter day in the history of the AgnosticWeb!

DAVID: No letter. I've always accepted Shapiro's studies that shows bacteria can alter their DNA. In Lenski's studies with perpetual E. coli colonies they alter their use of glucose and citrate. Both mechanisms of metabolism are present, but they are able to shift when necessary to what is available and that requires some change in DNA. The 3.8 byo program gets evidence from this knowledge.

Evolution requires changes in the DNA. I gave you the choice between a 3.8 byo programme for all the changes and a mechanism which enabled the cells to change AUTONOMOUSLY in response to changing conditions. You went for the mechanism, and believe that your God gave it to the cells. If they can change their own DNA autonomously, how does that provide evidence for a 3.8 byo programme for all the changes?

dhw: Once more I must thank you for your admirable integrity in offering us an article which supports the hypothesis you have so long resisted. It even uses my own favourite analogy of ant colonies. Shapiro champions cellular intelligence, and I don’t see how any organism that “learns” and creates instructions on the hoof (as opposed to being preprogrammed) can be seen as an automaton.

DAVID: The ability to alter metabolism can well be a 3.8 byo programmed ability.

You are playing with words. The ability to make changes autonomously would be 3.8 byo. That is what I have proposed. Your proposal has been that cells are automatons and all the individual changes were programmed in the first cells 3.8 billion years ago.

DAVID: You are still using environmental changes to push evolution, but some one or some thing has to do the designing for the large body changes.

dhw: Yes of course I am. Fins would not be much use if the pre-whale hadn’t taken to the water. You have just agreed that the ‘some thing’ is the cells themselves containing the mechanism which enables them to change autonomously as conditions change (provided God invented the mechanism).

DAVID: Cells in legs cannot decide to create fins and design them. Cells simply can alter metabolism as shown above.

Cells can alter their own DNA and their own structures. We do not know the extent to which they can do this, which is why Shapiro’s “natural genetic engineering”, or my more explicit concept of autonomous (possibly God-given) cellular intelligence as the inventor of innovations, remains a hypothesis.

DAVID: Animals are designed to fit their environments requirements which can change requiring new design or extinction. 'Bad luck' still applies. God steps in where He wishes.

I’m glad you now acknowledge the vital importance of environmental influence. It is indeed bad luck if organisms can’t use their possibly God-given autonomous intelligence to solve new problems. If God exists, then of course he can dabble if he wishes, and the theistic version of my hypothesis has always allowed for this. Chixculub might be an example. (The atheistic version would be that environmental change is purely by chance – bad luck in some cases, and good in others – though it is also possible that your God set up a system to engender random environmental change.)