Revisiting convergence: making teeth, shells, claws, nails (Introduction)

by dhw, Thursday, August 22, 2019, 09:51 (1919 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Appears to have developed many times in different lines of organisms:
https://phys.org/news/2019-08-biominerals-nature-recipe-evolved.html

DAVID: Another example of God using patterns of development in managing evolution.

dhw: Or another example of intelligent cells working things out in their own way, simultaneously coming up with similar solutions to similar problems, but each with their own variations to suit their particular conditions.

DAVID: You left out your theory that God made those intelligent cells to do his work.

That is not my theory. Do I have to keep repeating that I am an agnostic? The intelligent cell represents Chapter One in the history of life, and if God exists, then he designed it. The theory applies to Chapter Two, which is the history of evolution once life evolves into multicellularity, and the focus is on the work of the mechanism and not its origin.

Thank you for the other articles you have posted. As usual, I agree that chance is a very unsatisfactory explanation for the origin of such complex mechanisms. And as usual, you offer a snipe at Darwin. What a pity he never thought of the intelligent cell as a more likely source of innovation than random mutations, but 160 years ago they simply didn’t know about all the complexities of the cell, did they? However, he did forecast the opening of “a grand and almost untrodden field of inquiry…”!