Evolution: the newly-found bacterial role: (Evolution)

by David Turell , Wednesday, August 14, 2019, 16:42 (1926 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: […] it all can be automatic, based on instructions the organisms or cells carry.

dhw: Which, I repeat, means that 3.8 billion years ago your God provided the very first cells with programmes for every single development in the history of evolution, including every solution to every problem bacteria will ever face. Yes, it “can be” so – just as there “can be” an invisible teapot orbiting the sun (Bertrand Russell).

DAVID: Or God steps in at many steps to adjust designs.

dhw: I thought you were happy to dispense with the dabbling. Under “God’s divine nature”: “My thought about dabbling has always been a tentative alternative. I can easily accept the author’s viewpoint that dabbling is not required.” Which means you can easily accept that your God provided the first cells with programmes for every single life form etc., and every single solution to every problem bacteria would ever face.

My theories have to have flexibility. Dabbling cannot be absolutely ruled out.

Under “Magic embryology: what guides cell development, placement?”

dhw: This article shows how embryology mirrors the whole process of evolution. Of course cells/cell communities respond to their environment, whether internal or external, and adjust accordingly. If they didn’t, they would not survive. I agree that only design fits, [David’s bold] but every single species – which you and I believe descended from former species – has introduced new features, which means the embryo has inherited the innovations which the cell communities have newly designed (or in your theory were preprogrammed 3.8 billion years ago). Yes, an overall body plan has to exist, but it also had to be invented in the first place, as each species either adjusted to or exploited the environment. I agree that once it has been established, the process has to work more or less automatically – just as factory workers must follow given procedures (though that does not mean they are automatons) – but the process itself was first introduced by the cell communities of the preceding organism, and that could not have been automatic because it deviated from its inheritance. Divinely preprogrammed 3.8 billion years ago, the result of chance mutations, or the product of (possibly God-given) cellular intelligence?[/i][dhw’s bold]

DAVID: I note your agreement in regard to the need for design in bold above. Complex design requires complex thought. Cell committees do not fit the requirement. Your cellular theory fits only tiny modifications, not major alterations, as in whale evolution.

dhw: Yes, I agree that the complexities require design, and I disagree with your authoritative statement that cell communities are incapable of it. You don’t know that, and nor do I. It’s a theory, also promulgated by Shapiro, following on from the findings of such scientific luminaries as Margulis and McClintock, who were pioneers in the field of cellular intelligence. I ended my post with three possible explanations, now bolded. I really don’t know why you consider the first to be more credible than the third.

Shapiro and the others considered cellular intelligence to allow for minor adaptations. You are the one stretching it to major species modification. Not likely since so much advanced design is required