Bacterial Intelligence and Evolution (General)

by David Turell , Thursday, May 09, 2019, 22:03 (2023 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: Evolution proceeds through a process of modifications – some small and some big. I propose that all these modifications, big and small, are the result of intelligent cells RESPONDING to changes in the environment, whereas you think they are all preprogrammed or dabbled IN ANTICIPATION of environmental changes. I find that highly unconvincing.

DAVID: Then explain how whale mother's figured out how to nurse their baby whales, or seals or any other aquatic mammal? This cannot be developed step-by-step:
"Species from three orders – Carnivora (including seals and sea lions), Cetacea (dolphins and whales) and Sirenia (manatees and dugongs) – live and feed at sea, but they’ve evolved different methods for breastfeeding.
Seals and sea lions have retractable nipples that tuck inside the body when the baby is not feeding, but animals that are fully restricted to the sea, such as whales and dolphins, have evolved ‘mammary slits’ – special folds of skin that enclose the feeding glands.
We’re still not completely sure how they do it, but it is thought that either the calves can curl their tongues to channel released milk, or that specialised muscles actually contract the mammary glands, squeezing milk into the baby’s mouth.

dhw: We can spend the rest of our lives detailing every single special feature of every single species! Yes, they all have different methods of breast feeding. So what is your explanation: that either your God, whose only purpose was to design H. sapiens, provided the first living cells with a programme for every form of breastfeeding that you can think of, or he popped in to adjust all the glands and nipples? I propose that the different cell communities designed their own modes of breastfeeding as best suited to the requirements of the environment.

I will never believe that such steps as beast feeding under water developed without mental planning.

DAVID: I interpret new findings without any Darwin propaganda.

dhw: You interpret new findings with God propaganda, and you have not answered my point that you have no idea why a God with a strong purpose who knew what he wanted and did it directly would use such an indirect means of specially designing the only thing he wanted to design.

DAVID: Your human logic refuses to accept the method God had the absolute right to choose.

dhw: Yet again: my human logic, in keeping with your own (“you have no idea why…”) refuses to accept your INTERPRETATION of your God’s method: i.e. that he specially designed every single innovation, lifestyle and natural wonder, and did so in order to enable organisms to eat or not each one another until he specially designed the only thing he wanted to design.

I simply say : it was God's choice of method.

dhw: I don’t make a decision; I offer alternatives, all of which – as you have repeatedly agreed and in contrast to your fixed interpretation – make for perfectly logical interpretations.

DAVID: I would change your bolded statement to say : 'I can't make a decision', and I would add you have the absolute right not to.

dhw: Fair enough. That is no defence of your insistence that only your decision can be valid, even though you have no idea why your God would have chosen the method you attribute to him.

I don't have to know why He made he choice He did. Only you want it.