cellular intelligence; information controls (Evolution)

by dhw, Monday, May 27, 2019, 09:17 (2006 days ago) @ David Turell

QUOTE: "'The most striking thing is that this circuit is highly flexible, as this cell-wide web can rapidly reconfigure to deliver different outputs in a manner determined by the information received by and relayed from the nucleus. This is something no man-made microprocessors or circuit boards are yet capable of achieving.'"(David's bold)

Dhw: The comparison between organic intelligence and computers is a commonplace, but as your bold says quite explicitly, the cell’s materials can reconfigure themselves in response to new information in a manner that computers cannot. A perfect image for evolution by autonomous as opposed to preprogrammed activity.

DAVID: Are you missing the point that the ability of the cells to reconfigure themselves is part of the programming I believe exists? Again it is 50/50 in probability, and I'll stick with programming will not accept chance evolution at this level of complexity.

I could hardly miss your point, since you continue to insist that every single cellular response to every single environmental change in the history of evolution was either divinely dabbled or preprogrammed in the very first cells, and passed down through millions and millions of generations of life forms. As for your final comment here, how often do I have to repeat that I do not accept chance evolution either? The alternative for me is not chance but a possibly God-given autonomous intelligence. Since you concede 50/50, I really don’t know why you then go to insist that for you it’s 100/0.

dhw: As always, you the self-professed dualist take the physical processes to be the source of the decisions that lead to the “reconfigurations”. Yes, the information is provided physically, and yes the process of reconfiguration is physical, but how the information is processed and how the new decisions are reached remains a mystery. That is where the computer image breaks down, as is all too evident from the above passage.

DAVID: That is exactly correct, cells are way more advanced than our static computers, and the nucleus is programmed to make the appropriate changes, another layer of teh complexity of the genome.

dhw: Thank you. So let us forget the inadequate computer image. Your programming comment (in which 50/50 = 100/0) is answered above.

DAVID: This is well beyond anything a Darwin-style evolution could develop. It requires exquisite design by a master designer. God is required.

dhw: Darwin did not deal with the origin of the mechanisms that drive evolution (although in later editions he frequently refers to the Creator). I have always accepted the argument that the complexities of my (still unproven) cellular intelligence may have been designed by your God. That is not the issue here.

DAVID: Darwin's first book shows his real feelings. My thought is that social pressures made him pop in God later.

As you well know, Darwin said explicitly that he regarded himself as an agnostic. But my point is that he did not deal with the origin of the mechanism, so why bring him into it? The issue here is the nature of the mechanism, not the existence of God.