Biological complexity: feedback loops are vital (Introduction)

by dhw, Monday, September 23, 2019, 11:34 (1889 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: The proposal is that bacteria process information from their environment, presumably with what would be their equivalent of a brain. I don’t have time to research all the experiments and observations made by McClintock, Margulis, James Shapiro, Albrecht Bühler or all the other scientists who support the theory that bacteria are intelligent, but earlier you admitted that they are in a majority.

DAVID: Newer concepts come from a minority (Thomas Kuhn). Yes bacteria process information from their environment but decision making for responses requires the use of internal information at their disposal. Where did that information come from? Your favorite scientists cannot tell you.

dhw: Or to put it a different way, decision-making requires the use of intelligence. Where did that intelligence come from? Maybe from your God. Nobody knows. Materialists believe intelligence comes from the brain, which is a mass of individual cells.

DAVID: Back to the discussion about the baby brain being a blank slate, except for inherited tendencies.

We are talking about bacterial intelligence.

dhw: In that case bacterial intelligence would come from the bacterial equivalent of a brain within a cell.

DAVID: Such brainy organelle has never been described.

Albrecht-Buehler thinks the centrosome and centrioles constitute the “brain” and “eyes” of the cell. Who knows? Nobody has yet succeeded in describing how ANY form of intelligence is generated. We only have theories.

DAVID: Comment (under “Genome complexity”): The importance of activating the correct genes in each cell is backed up by a complex of six special proteins each of which can do the job. Such a system has to be designed, and cannot develop by chance. How does a mindless mechanism recognize the need for such an important backup system?

There is a similar comment under “How cholesterol enters cells”. It is unfortunate that there are no atheists currently contributing to this forum. I do miss George Jelliss! For me, the complexity of the cell alone is sufficient to cast doubt on the chance theory that is the atheist alternative to design. I accept the atheist argument that one mystery (God) doesn’t solve another mystery (life’s complexity), which is why I stay on my agnostic fence, but I would really like to know how an atheist justifies his faith in the ability of chance to create the mechanisms of the cell.

The rest of your post is quoted and amply covered under "Natural Wonders and Evolution".