Biological complexity: managing cellular oxygen levels (Introduction)

by dhw, Wednesday, October 09, 2019, 12:08 (1873 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Any time there is a cascade of critical control reactions it must be developed all at once, never by hunt and peck. Only design at the beginning will work.

dhw: With all forms of adaptation, the cells must find a way to adjust themselves, and if we take the example of bacteria, we know that millions of them may die before the correct balance is found. No doubt if organisms were once subjected to sudden changes in the oxygen level, there would have been millions of deaths until the cell communities found a way to correct the balance.

DAVID: You are totally missing the point. Look back into the article. This is not environmental oxygen levels and use. Remember yourself in Cricket. At bat your body is tense but still. Everything is well-oxygenated. You hit and start running. Now certain areas (arm and leg muscles) need more oxygen. Other now will lack oxygen unless critical shifts in cells isn't accomplished.

And I am pointing out that every form of adaptation must have had a beginning. Our own body is the consequence of millions of years in which cells and cell communities have had to adapt to millions of new situations. Now that each one is established, of course the reactions happen at once, and I agree that they are the product of intelligent design (and propose that the perhaps God-given intelligence of cells is the designing force). I do not agree that every adaptation must have been designed all at once, and never by hunt or peck. You have missed the point that even now we see organisms dying until the cells eventually find a way of adjusting their balance to the demands of the conditions.

DAVID: Not a problem for single cellular organisms, but a coordinated system for multicellular organisms with many moving parts required for their development, and therefore must be totally in place as they developed. Only design fits.

Of course the system must be coordinated in multicellular organisms - hence cooperation between the different cell communities.

Under "Magic embryology":
dhw: The emphasis always seems to be on cooperation, with the cells creating and organizing patterns which must at one time have been new to life’s history. Once a pattern is successful, it survives. Every single one divinely preprogrammed 3.8 billion years ago, or separately designed by the cells themselves, using their perhaps God-given intelligence in response to new challenges and new opportunities?

DAVID: This is a pattern with a future goal of construction. What is laid out in the total embryo is a guide to that future result. Each cell must follow instructions and do its singular part to follow the plan which is set up in advance to achieve the goal. Under your view I don't know how a new horse will appear after the egg is fertilized. The cells are programmed to follow the electrical patterns. They do not set up the pattern.

Again: once a pattern has been established, it will be repeated, but nobody knows how speciation – i.e. new patterns – first arise. You say every undabbled change in the history of life was divinely preprogrammed 3.8 billion years ago. I propose that every change was the result of cell communities responding to the demands or opportunities presented by new conditions. The embryo presumably inherits the patterns established by those changes, but nobody knows how it all works.

Under “Natural wonders”:
DAVID: this sort of avoidance activity suggest that the insect somehow knows the future consequences of its egg deposition. How do insects anticipate the future? I doubt they do and are programmed in this way to protect the larvae.

As usual, you forget the fact that all these strategies and wonders must have had a beginning! No matter how the strategy first arose, it worked, and from then on, the species followed the successful pattern. No anticipation of the future required, other than the knowledge that larvae must be protected from predators, and this has proved to be a good way to do it. But if you think your God specially designed this particular programme 3.8 billion years ago as part of his having to cover the time he’d decided to wait before he fulfilled his one and only purpose of specially designing H. sapiens, so be it.