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

by David Turell , Saturday, March 02, 2019, 00:11 (1883 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: I have no problem at all with your belief in God. This discussion focuses on your interpretation of your God’s purposes and methods, and in particular on your insistence that the unknown mechanism that leads to speciation cannot possibly be cellular intelligence – Instead you have a fixed belief that your God either intervened personally (dabbled) or the cell communities automatically chose the correct instructions from a 3.8-billion-year-old library of information and instructions that was stored in their genome, detailing every single innovation, lifestyle and natural wonder in the history of life. And all for the sake of delaying his design of the only thing he wanted to design: you and me.

DAVID: Your thoughts about my thoughts of God are very confused. My conclusions about God's actions are based on the reasons why I accepted that God exists, and all follow logically from my original conclusions. These are your problems as you study the concept of God from the outside.

dhw: Nobody can study the concept of God from the inside. Your belief that God exists is based on logical arguments for design, but they provide no justification for the beliefs summarized above.

I'm simply proposing likely ways God controlled the process.

DAVID: Shapiro studies bacteria which are responsible for their own survival.

dhw: I’m delighted at your agreement that bacteria are responsible for their own survival, as opposed to following instructions issued 3.8 billion years ago. They are individual living organisms.

DAVID: My view of bacteria differs: They have a library of possible responses as threats and environmental changes appear. Their survival ability depends upon choosing the correct responses, which they obviously can do, having survived since the start of life.

dhw: Ah, so they are only responsible for looking into the 3.8-billion-year-old library of instructions for the whole history of undabbled life, and for picking out the one set of instructions for their new situation – which apparently they do automatically because they are also preprogrammed to pick out the right programme. Isn’t it possible that their survival ability depends on their working out their own solutions, i.e. “being responsible for their own survival” using the (perhaps God-given) intelligence that Shapiro’s research suggests?

They have a few simple things they sense, listed in the past.

dhw: …as I keep agreeing, we do not know whether they [cells/cell communities] are capable of the innovations which result in speciation. That is why, just like your library and your divine dabbling, it is a hypothesis and not a fact.

DAVID: Yes, it fills in for God, and admits something must design the future steps. To me God represents a specific purpose. Do cell committees have purpose other than immediate adaptability?

In my hypothesis they are not future steps but intelligent responses to current conditions. ... I also believe the purpose of cell communities is to ensure survival and, in my hypothesis, to improve chances of survival through innovation. That does not mean that the only reason they had to survive was to give your God 3.5+ billion years to design humans.

That doesn't explain why we are here. We were never necessary as a logical step. The difference of Man theory.

DAVID (under “Human evolution”: this an obvious transitional fossil, but full blown speciation requiring design. I don't believe the cells of the common ancestor of chimps and humans could conceive of how to design a foot and spine and pelvis for bipedal movement.

dhw: Hurray for all these transitional fossils, though I can’t help wondering why an always-in-control God should need to take 3.5+ billion years before specially designing big toes, spines and pelvises on the way to his sole aim of specially designing us. However, it is not inconceivable that improvements might gradually emerge as generation after generation of cell communities come up with new ideas. Just a hypothesis.

Itty-bitty steps again. if we could only find the your hypotheses about cell inventions might have some credence. Mind the gaps!

DAVID (under “Egnor”): And again, if there was no awareness of a large portion of reality how did cell committees know to create brains/minds. Cell committees can't create evolved new forms.

dhw: Opinion stated as fact. Yet again: nobody knows how new forms evolved. One theory is random mutations, and another is the inventiveness of intelligent cells (perhaps designed by your God – or do you think your God is incapable of designing inventive “minds” other than those of H. sapiens?). Now please tell us how immaterial “pure energy” - as you have described your God - knew how to create and presumably perceive materially generated sound, sight, smell, taste, touch if they had never existed before. How indeed can pure energy even be conscious of itself? The history of evolution only shows us what has been invented – not how it was invented. That is a mystery which you “solve” by creating an even greater mystery. But you may be right. I am an agnostic.

I view God as pure energy forming the most brilliant mind around! Consciousness cannot appear de novo from gasses, rocks and minerals. I am conscious and I believe your are.