Bacterial Intelligence and Evolution (General)

by dhw, Sunday, May 05, 2019, 09:46 (2028 days ago) @ David Turell

I am combining several threads, since they all focus on the same arguments.

DAVID: I fully understand your theory, which means cells have the capacity to plan for the future.

dhw; No it doesn’t. It means the capacity to make the necessary changes to cope with or exploit existing (not future) environmental conditions. I do not imagine pre-whale cells saying to themselves: some time in the future, we shall have to leave dry land, so let us change our legs into flippers before it happens.

DAVID: Well, surprise! Cells inventing new species is exactly what you have been touting.

What is the surprise? The whole point of the hypothesis is that they invent new species (i.e. change their own structure) IN RESPONSE TO to changing conditions and not in advance of them.

DAVID: I do not accept that minor adaptations within an existing species would ever lead to eventual speciation.

dhw: My proposal is that the same mechanism (cellular intelligence) is responsible both for adaptation and innovation. Straightforward cases of the former will obviously not result in speciation, whereas the latter will, but I would not like to draw a strict borderline between the two processes.

Perhaps you would tell us whether you regard a flipper as an innovation or as an adaptation of the pre-existing leg to enable it to function better in water.

DAVID: (under "Early embryology"): What we are debating is the necessity of a planning mind to arrange for the complex designs we see as evolution advances for simple to very complex. You have extrapolated simple cellular responses, which have the appearance of intellectual guidance because they are purposeful in their results, to the suggestion they can actually plan for the future complexities.

Yet again: my suggestion is evolution as the history of intelligent cells REACTING to changing conditions, not anticipating them. Many scientists now believe that the purposeful results achieved by cells denote autonomous (as opposed to your God-guided) intelligence, but whether this is inventive enough to power speciation remains a hypothesis.

DAVID: I find that idea as totally fanciful. I see the mind of God as necessary.

Your suggestion is that your God provided the very first cells with an undiscovered 3.8-billion-year-old computer programme for every undabbled bacterial variation, evolutionary innovation, econiche, life form, lifestyle and natural wonder in the history of life, but you do not regard that as fanciful. My theistic alternative is that your God may have provided the first cells with the mechanisms to do their own designing in response to changing conditions. Why is that more fanciful than your proposal?

DAVID: You constantly come back to my simple acceptance of God's choice of method as somehow lacking substance. We see the evolutionary history as evidence of how it was done. What more do you need? I can only think of direct creation or evolution as possibilities. Do you know of a third way?

We both accept that evolution happened, but your concept of evolution is that it was all preprogrammed or dabbled (both of which are a form of direct creation). This in itself is not illogical. It only leaves you floundering when you insist that it was all preprogrammed or dabbled so that God could fulfil his one and only purpose of specially preprogramming/dabbling H. sapiens, leading to your exasperated cry: “Haven’t you realized by now, I have no idea why God chose to evolve humans over time”.

DAVID (under “anthropithicus”): Evolution requires steps to reach a goal. No matter how hard you try to make the steps as small, the design requirements and the gaps in forms is very large. Each step in whale evolution is the result of highly complex phenotypical and physiological design steps. In my view as God chose evolution to reach His goal of large-brained humans He knew He had to provide a larger bush of eco-niches to feel everyone on the way over lots of time. I don't know why you cannot see that as totally logical?

You cannot even see the logic yourself. Of course evolution is the history of steps, and of course the steps may be highly complex and sometimes large, and the gap between bacteria, whales, elephants, the duckbilled platypus and humans is also large. However, none of that explains why your God would choose to specially design all these life forms to eat or not eat one another if H. sapiens was the only thing he wanted to specially design, and if – as you maintain – he could and actually did specially design all the features (brain, pelvis, bipedalism) peculiar to H. sapiens. Hence the fact that you have no idea why he would have chosen your version of his method in order to achieve your version of his purpose.