Genome complexity: seemingly not in obvious DNA (Introduction)

by dhw, Wednesday, July 08, 2020, 10:48 (1387 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: The need for accommodation for an enlarged brain required all the changes I noted, including changes in or by three individuals, father, Mother, and new-sized baby. Cell committees must be clairvoyant to cooperate as dhw describes.

dhw: […] No doubt there would have been many deaths before the adaptation was complete, but in all cases, the cell communities respond to changes – they do not anticipate them. I find this more plausible than your God stepping in and fiddling with a group of homos who wake up next morning with bigger brains, skulls and pelvises.

DAVID: And I do not believe cell committees can create new species, which is your claim.

I gave you a full response to your claim that in the context of brain/skull/pelvis, my theory required clairvoyance. It doesn’t. Skull responds to requirements of brain, pelvis responds to requirements of foetus. No simultaneity, no clairvoyance. Your belief concerning speciation is irrelevant and does not provide an answer to my proposal.

DAVID: This obstetric dilemma is a major evolutionary issue as this review makes quite clear, and even has major obstetric importance today. I don't believe dhw's 'smart cooperating' cells could solve the problems by themselves, but God could easily.

dhw: The above puts paid to your God’s overnight expansion of brain, skull and pelvis, and clearly shows that the whole process of maternal pelvis adaptation was not only long but also difficult, and is still difficult today. Why did your God, who could do it “easily”, make it so lengthy and so difficult? I see nothing in this whole article to contradict the proposal I have put forward. The only new factor is the requirements of “locomotion” (itself a possible cause of brain expansion).

DAVID: Nothing 'put paid'. The new pelvis for upright posture and birthing large baby brain was a complicated redesign of the pelvis. Please remember Lucy had a tiny brain but her pelvis had adapted for mainly upright locomotion. Real brain expansion followed this in newer species. But the resultant very new pelvic shape still requires our difficult births. It is a trade off: we have full use of arms and hands and apes do not.

I am not disputing any of this! Your theory is that your God kept on simultaneously enlarging brains, skulls and pelvises overnight. I suggest that the enlargements would have been sequent and would have required time.

DAVID: As for why God took time, please remember my observation that God likes to evolve: the universe, the giant Milky Way which gobbled/es up satellite galaxies, the Earth, and then life. You never deny this, just ignore it.

There is no point in denying the blindingly obvious fact that evolution took time! But according to you, each enlargement was abrupt – it did not take time, because your God dabbled each one. And to make matters worse, you say he could easily solve what is still a problem that causes difficulty. So why didn’t he?

dhw: David is quite right: “we do not know how cells produce the results they control”. But the very statement that they control the results might suggest that cellular intelligence (possibly designed by a God) is a very plausible alternative to chance, divine preprogramming and divine dabbling.

DAVID: Again glossing over 'cell intelligence'. It had a definite cause, but dhw's wishy-washy discussion leaves the source hanging. Chance or God the designer?

dhw: I am delighted that your comment offers no opposition to the theory of cellular intelligence. I don’t “gloss over” the cause – I openly admit that I don’t know whether it’s chance, God, or some form of panpsychism.

DAVID: The 'glossing over' refers to a source of the appearance of 'cellular intelligence', which you have just enumerated, adding panpsychism, a nebulous invention that simply pushed further away the issue of where did panpsychism come from, if it even exists? I remind cells follow intelligent instructions implanted by God so they will function properly.

“Just enumerated, adding panpsychism…”? I have ALWAYS allowed for God as the inventor of cellular intelligence, and for years I have included a form of panpsychism in my list of possible “first causes”. The issue of where panpsychism came from, if it even exists, applies equally to your God. I don’t know why you are “reminding” me of your theory that 3.8 billion years ago your God programmed the first cells to pass on instructions for every single undabbled development in evolution, including life forms, econiches, strategies, lifestyles, natural wonders, responses to diseases etc. I remain stubbornly convinced that this is just a little far-fetched, and perhaps one might just consider the possibility that your God provided cells with the intelligence to design all of these themselves.