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

by dhw, Sunday, March 03, 2019, 10:52 (1882 days ago) @ David Turell

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.

DAVID: I still believe in a first cause which has to be eternal.

So do I. But I can’t choose between the two equally mysterious options I have described.

DAVID: I view God as pure energy forming the most brilliant mind around! Consciousness cannot appear de novo from gasses, rocks and minerals. [..]

dhw: […] 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.

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

I don’t “accept” either of the options! You have a fixed belief that “pure energy” can simply BE conscious etc., and that gases and materials cannot combine spontaneously to create consciousness. I find both hypotheses equally impossible to accept, even though one of them must be correct. That is one major reason for my agnosticism.

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.

DAVID: Not opinion, bacteria have need of very few responses.

They have need of responses to every single situation and environment in which they have found themselves since the beginning of life. Now please explain how they manage unthinkingly to select relevant instructions for every single situation out of your great library of instructions for the whole of life.

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: 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.

DAVID: 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.

Sorry you couldn’t respond to the major point about your God’s itty-bitty steps. As regards my hypothesis, it is absolutely NOT a fact that cells operate automatically (although I have pointed out that they may do so once a system has been established, and will only change if conditions change). That is your opinion, which you admit has a 50/50 chance of being wrong, i.e. that their intelligent ways may be the product of autonomous intelligence. And how often do I have to repeat that my hypothesis is a hypothesis. If only we could find your God’s 3.8-billion-year-old library of instructions for the whole of life, your hypothesis might have some credence.