Genome complexity: what genes do and don't do (Introduction)

by David Turell , Thursday, February 14, 2019, 19:13 (2108 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: How can you avoid the origin of life in our discussions. We can assume that the genome at the very beginning had all or many of the characteristics that we debate when we debate how it all works.

dhw: I have not ignored the origin of life! Over and over again I have emphasized that the mechanisms for life and evolution may have been created by your God. The dispute, then, is confined to what your God put in those first cells: you insist that it was a library with all the information and instructions necessary for evolution (other than those he dabbled), including the slug’s defensive glue, the pre-baleen whale’s toothlessness, and the weaverbird’s nest, whereas I suggest it was the intelligence to process both old and new information and then to create new instructions.

We cannot really dispute what is in the first cells. We only have suppositions. I'm still awaiting Behe's book on deletions which would support my points.

Dhw (re bacterial resistance): Maybe the mechanism is not “spontaneous”, and maybe resistance/non-resistance depends on what you would call each bacterium’s “own operating system” for interpreting information and acting on it, i.e. “single cells change their metabolic pathways"… and “learn” and “create instructions on the hoof”, as proposed in the article you initially agreed with. The expansion of resistant bacteria would then take time because those bacteria which work out the solution to the new problems would have to pass on the new information.

DAVID : The one percent who have resistance multiply every 20 minutes. Not much time to take. Lenski's E.coli show this.

dhw: Time is not the main point here, as we are discussing the mechanisms that enable resistance: your 3.8-billion year old library of information and instructions, or an autonomously intelligent “own operating system” in which bacteria create their own instructions. I mentioned time because it can take a while before antibiotics become ineffective.

DAVID: If one percent are already resistant , there are no new instructions.

dhw: There is no way of telling whether the one per cent are already resistant (having presumably been given special instructions 3.8 billion years ago) or have worked out a way of resisting.

Are you disputing science finds one percent are already resistant before the antibiotic is given?

Under “new axons may make local decisions”:

DAVID: A new study strongly suggests that newly developing axons have some degree of self-control […] (dhw’s bold)

dhw: If distant parts of the system have a degree of self-control, doesn't this suggest to you that the central part of the system itself also has self-control or, in your own words, its "own operating system".

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2019-02-nerve-cells-foot-soldier-axon.html

dhw: Thank you once more for your integrity in presenting yet more evidence that cells and cell communities are run by independent, decision-making intelligence, as bolded. In this context, I take “semi-autonomous” to mean that some decisions are taken independently of the main control system (the nucleus and cell body).

DAVID: I view it as the growing ends of the axon branches respond to local stimuli and either grow toward or away automatically according to instructions it carries.

dhw: The article, as I bolded (but I shan’t repeat all the relevant quotes here), suggests not only that the axons can take their own decisions, but also that generally instructions come from the main control centre (“central command”/the “cell body”). Self-control, decision-making, autonomy, semi-autonomy, semi-independent are not synonymous with “automatic”. Thank you again for providing scientific evidence that contradicts your view of automaticity – or do you now wish to claim that these scientists too are fakers only interested in getting grants?

They are not fakers. I view the final steps in reaching a connection are automatic molecular reactions. This earlier steps are as you describe.