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

by dhw, Thursday, March 07, 2019, 10:21 (1878 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: For years now you have been telling us that your God provided the first unicellular forms of life with a computer programme for every single undabbled innovation etc. in the history of evolution. Now you are telling us that bacteria were only provided with a library for bacteria. ...Your library theory is literally falling to pieces.

DAVID: Use your logic. My concept is that Bacteria are bacteria because their only genome access is the bacterial level of instructions. Different levels open up throughout evolution.

So the first living cells contained a library of programmes for every single undabbled life form etc. in the history of life, but although unicellular forms were the only life forms, they only contained the programmes pertinent to themselves. So how on earth did they manage to pass on the programmes for elephants, whales, humans and the duckbilled platypus?

dhw: I note you continue to avoid the question of how bacteria select God’s instructions on how to use his instructions – or do you really believe your God pops in to do a dabble every time they are in trouble?

DAVID: Dabbling is always a possibility, but bacteria can only access what is meant for them to use.

See above for the impossibility of bacteria passing on programmes they don’t have. You are therefore left with your God dabbling every single life form, lifestyle etc. subsequent to bacteria – and this indeed is what you frequently imply in your wonderful catalogue of Nature’s wonders, normally accompanied by the comment that these must be the product of design. You haven’t made that comment on the latest of these, but we can use it as an example:
QUOTE: Today, the transient anus may be unique to the warty comb jelly. Tamm is now looking at other species of comb jelly, but so far they appear to have permanent anuses."

DAVID: The bush of life has some strange twigs.

It certainly does. May I ask if you think the disappearing anus was programmed 3.8 billion years ago or was the result of a divine dabble, in order to keep life going for 3.5+ billion years until your God could design the only thing he wanted to design: the brain of H. sapiens? Or could this strange twig have been uniquely designed by the cell communities of the warty comb jelly?

dhw: Bacteria have been found in virtually every environment on earth. Each one demands special adaptation. And I am not “imagining” the health crisis that has arisen through the fact that they always find a solution to the tricky situations created by antibiotics. Millions of them die. God didn’t dabble to save them, or they didn’t receive the anti-antibiotic programme he is supposed to have installed 3.8 billion years ago. But eventually they come up with a solution. Yes, they remain themselves, and automatic cell division is an integral part of all life: once a system is successful, its accurate reproduction is essential to the survival of the system. And to anticipate your usual question, nobody knows how life, reproduction and the ability to adapt and to innovate (i.e. to restructure existing cell communities) first arose. One theory is that a universal mind we call God did the original engineering.

DAVID: I agree.

Then please stop harping on about simple lives, Lenski’s E-coli and cell division, as if somehow they prove that bacteria cannot be intelligent.

dhw: You would have thought that if individuals grouped together and thus achieved results they could not achieve as independent particles, it might be conceivable that they did so actively and intentionally. And the more often they do it, and the more successful they are, the more likely it might seem that they do it actively and intentionally.

DAVID: Having quorum sensing allows them to flow with the group. Automatic.

dhw: Wikipedia definition: Quorum sensing is the ability to detect and to respond to cell population density by gene regulation. […] Many species of bacteria use quorum sensing to coordinate gene expression according to the density of their local population. In similar fashion, some social insects use quorum sensing to determine where to nest.
No mention of the word “automatic”. Bacteria USE quorum sensing to detect and respond, to coordinate and to determine.

DAVID: And I view it as automatic. Wikipedia is not authoritative, it is full of opinion You don 't know the background of that particular writer. Is he a Darwin follower?

What on earth does this have to do with Darwin? I don’t recall Darwin ever promoting the idea that bacteria are intelligent organisms which use quorum sensing to cooperate in making decisions. You are the one who insists that their decision-making is automatic, and for some reason you brought up quorum sensing to try and discredit the proposal that the more successful bacterial cooperation is, the more likely it is to be active and intentional.

Under “confirmation bias”:
DAVID: The worst cases are in the sociology and psychology sciences where much research cannot be confirmed. But this clearly points out skepticism is needed when reading any article with Darwin-inculcated authors.

Nobody knows the objective truth about any of the major issues we keep discussing. Therefore scepticism is needed when reading any article written by authors with fixed beliefs of whatever kind.