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

by David Turell , Saturday, March 02, 2019, 17:30 (2092 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: (Under “Egnor”): My point was if nothing is mental in the universe how do cells know to create a mental capacity? Just another logical attack on your beloved cell groups.

dhw: Of course there has to be something mental in the universe. The question is whether there was something mental BEFORE the universe, or something mental evolved within the universe.

I still believe in a first cause which has to b e eternal.

DAVID: 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 you are.

dhw: I too believe we are conscious. I know how you view God, and I gave you an answer last time which you have completely ignored, so here it is again: I don’t know how consciousness can evolve de novo from gases, rocks and minerals. Nor do I know how “pure energy” can simply BE conscious and can know all about materially generated life, sound, sight, smell, taste, touch even before the materials exist. 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.

And you accept that consciousness might have appeared from rocks uncaused.

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

dhw: Opinion stated as fact. So please explain how they select the one set of relevant instructions from the 3.8-billion-year-old library of instructions for every life form and every situation in the history of life past, present and future.

Not opinion , bacteria have need of very few responses.

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.

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

dhw: It is you who have drawn attention to the itty-bitty steps. Specially designed big toes, spines, pelvises, legs and mini-to-maxi brains as apes turn into hominins turn into humans turn into H. sapiens. There's a gap in your sentence: “If we could only find the your hypotheses”...but perhaps you meant the transitional fossils which indicate itty-bitty steps. Amazingly, it seems that we are finding more and more of them, all specially designed according to you, as your always-in-control God for some inexplicable reason, after 3.5+ billion years of specially designing anything but H. sapiens, now specially designs the itty bits which will eventually become parts of H. sapiens, which is the only thing he ever wanted to specially design in the first place.

What the sentence should say 'is if we could only find the cellular mechanism to support your hypothesis'. It is all hypothesis based on the fact that cells operate automatically in very intelligent ways.