David's theory of evolution: Stephen Talbott's view (Evolution)

by David Turell , Monday, November 18, 2019, 15:20 (1830 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: All ID folks believe new species are designed. When I chatted with Behe at a conference, I firmly believed he believed that.

dhw: Of course they do. My question was which of them believes they arrived BEFORE the conditions to which they would one day be suited.

DAVID: Their view of design is that the animals are designed for future problems in advance.

dhw: Of course if they share your belief that all species were preprogrammed 3.8 billion years ago, everything was planned in advance, so just to clarify: do they believe that as you now claim, evolutionary innovations actually happen before the existence of the future conditions which they are meant to deal with (e.g. pre-whale legs turned into flippers before pre-whales entered the water), or do they agree with the view you offered in your admirable book that organisms have “the ability to respond to the present” – though this “must have been built in the distant past”?

The bold refers to adaptive ability, not speciation. You continually morph my ideas into your thinking .

DAVID: What you are skipping is the point I have made that Shapiro's work is on free-living bacteria, which cannot translate to cells in a multicellular organism.

dhw: But you yourself have quoted multiple passages in which he refers to cellular intelligence as being able to “self-modify” to the point of creating “evolutionary novelty”. Why don’t you deal with the theory itself instead of trying to withdraw your fulsome praise and now denigrate the theory because you think his research was limited to bacteria.

It was limited to bacteria and you have avoided answering my comment that it is not related to DNA adaptive function in multicellular organisms enough to cause speciation.

DAVID: (under “Biological complexity”): I would note dhw's favorite Albrecht- Buehler thought the Golgi body was the brains of the cell. Seems like there are other parts also at work automatically.

dhw: Is the Golgi body synonymous with the centrosome, then? And yes of course there are parts that work automatically. The “brain” - whether human, dog, crow, ant or cellular equivalent – absorbs information from the outside world automatically; the processing, communication and decision-making are then done intelligently, and the implementation of decisions again involves automatic obedience.

DAVID: The Golgi body is not the centrosome. They are closer together and more than likely work together. This means the Golgi is not the sole 'brain'.

dhw: Thank you. Albrecht-Buehler thought the centrosome was the brain equivalent. And please note my response to your emphasis on automaticity.

You appear to be saying as usual cells can think and make decisions that look automatic. Of course I disagree.