Biological complexity: managing cellular oxygen levels (Introduction)

by David Turell , Wednesday, October 30, 2019, 14:35 (1637 days ago) @ dhw

Amazing how far we have digressed from “managing cellular oxygen levels”, but it actually comes back to the same subject, because I use ant behaviour as an analogy to the way cells autonomously organize themselves, respond to new situations, communicate and take decisions.

dhw: So why do you think your God preprogrammed the ant march but intelligent humans worked out the human march?

DAVID: Because we can plan a lesson in marching. Yes elder ants can teach a path to follow.

And what makes you so sure that the ant march was not originally worked out by intelligent creatures who passed on their “invention” to succeeding generations?

DAVID: I was trained, ants were programmed.

dhw: And that is the nub of the matter. You keep repeating your fixed belief as if it were a fact. So 3.8 billion years ago, your God preprogrammed not only the life form of the ant, but also every single strategy that ants would use to increase their prospects of survival, and indeed the role that each individual ant would play in the strategy. Multiply this by the billions of other life forms, lifestyles and natural wonders which according to you were also preprogrammed in those first living cells[…] And you talk of just-so stories! How about the possibility that (assuming he exists) he gave all these organisms the wherewithal to figure out their own strategies? Wouldn’t that be almost infinitely simpler, and wouldn’t that explain the huge diversity of life forms, natural wonders etc. which we know constitutes the history of life? Too humanly logical for you?

DAVID: Your guess that He taught ants to think for themselves is not supported by the bridge study. why do you keep ignoring that study? Because it won't support your ant thought theory.

dhw: I have not ignored that study at all, but have constantly pointed out to you that the bridge strategy, just like all strategies, must have had an ORIGIN. When confronted with a problem, ants – like every other organism – must either work out a solution or they perish. Once they have worked it out, it is passed on and automatically re-used by subsequent generations. And that is the basis of all evolutionary development: whatever works survives. (Yes, that is Darwinian, and perfectly logical.)

Each ant in the bridge study grabs another ant, each in the same way, to pass over a gap. Undoubtedly an instinct for the colony. It is an exact parallel to ants marching, each ant doing exactly the same thing. Humans are taught to march and have introspection about it. Ants march spaced, simply because they 'know' not to touch each other, no thought involved

dhw: In the meantime, you totally ignore the sheer incredibility of the above theory that your God provided the first living cells with absolutely every undabbled new organ etc., all in order to “cover the time” before dabbling or switching on the only programme he really wanted: H. sapiens. That really takes some believing! Even you accept that it defies human logic.

Usual distortion, commented upon elsewhere