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

by dhw, Saturday, February 23, 2019, 12:52 (2100 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: God is in control and if he created such a mechanism, as you imagine, it would contain guidelines.

dhw: You agree the odds [for cellular intelligence] are 50/50, but in your view they are not 50/50. As for your guidelines, they have turned out to be a 3.8-billion-year-old library of information and instructions for every undabbled innovation, lifestyle and natural wonder in the history of life. The exact opposite of the autonomous mechanism I am proposing.

DAVID: And which I continue to reject. You like a slightly impotent God.

As explained under “Big brain evolution”, there is no impotence involved if God chooses to give evolution free rein through his design of an autonomous mechanism (cellular intelligence), as opposed to providing a 3.8-billion-year-old library of information and instructions for every single undabbled life form, lifestyle and natural wonder, plus solutions for every single problem that bacteria would have to solve for the rest of time.

DAVID: Cells have fixed roles. Cells have no ability to invent.

dhw: Cells have fixed roles once an innovation has proved to be successful. Then it is only when new conditions arise that they take on new roles. [The ability to invent] is the big question, and that is why my proposal remains a hypothesis, as does your own. But if in your view cells have a 50/50 chance of being autonomously intelligent and hence of creating instructions “on the hoof” or “de novo”, as believed by some scientists in the field, then clearly it is a hypothesis that demands serious consideration even by you - and without the condition of “guidelines” which = God’s instructions.

DAVID: What all cells can do according to your scientists and mine is that cells can modify responses as necessary, but they still remain the same cells,. Lenski's E. coli have made minor metabolic changes, but are still E. coli after 20,000+ generations. Based on those facts and the many requirements to jump from Ediacaran to Cambrian, Ediacaran cells did not invent Cambrian forms. That is what your hypothesis logically proposes! I can't seriously consider it any more than I can accept an inventive mechanism without God's guidelines.

We only know what cells/cell communities do after the fact of speciation. Nobody knows how the innovations occurred. I accept your rational doubts about cells’ ability to invent – it is a hypothesis – just as we both rationally doubt the efficacy of random mutations as the driving force. But for the life of me I cannot understand how you can stick to your irrational fixed belief that although your God’s one and only purpose was to specially design the brain of H. sapiens, he chose to create a now 3.8-billion-year-old library with precise instructions for flippers, slug glue, cuttlefish camouflage, dragonfly reproduction systems and the weaverbird’s nest, plus every other undabbled life form extinct and extant.