Miscellany (General)

by David Turell , Tuesday, August 03, 2021, 17:44 (1206 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: Once again, on the outside looking in, cells following instructions look as though they are innately intelligent. Our usual difference.

dhw: Your usual desperate backtracking. You wrote: “..we are designed to learn about every invader with newly developed responses we create. We are designed for future problems by making new answers de novo.”

dhw: How can “we create new answers de novo” possibly mean we obey instructions already planted in us by your God?

New antibodies to new threats are made by following instructions that exist from birth

New extremophiles

DAVID: Same difference in interpretation.

dhw: Same refusal to accept your own statement that God gave cells “complete mechanisms of recognition and response” which constitute what, in another quote, scientists call “the rudimentary ability to remember prior results and learn from experience”. All these abilities enable cells to “create the answers de novo”. Remembering, learning and then creating de novo do not mean following instructions.

In my mind that is exactly what I mean. Our cells can make entirely new antibodies following instructions

Larvae use virus for immunity

DAVID: God obviously knew flippers were a requirement.

dhw: A requirement for what, if not for improving their chances of survival?

Helping survival doesn't advance speciation

Retinal design allows prediction of movement
Quote: The ganglion cell ultimately collects the incoming information from the bipolar cells and encodes it in signals that provides the brain with information about the motion of the object. With information from many thousands of these ganglion cells about the path of the object, the brain can then quickly predict its trajectory.

dhw: Yet another example of the ways in which cells gather information and send it to the brain cells, which process the information and make their decisions. We are a community of cell communities, all working in harmony with one another, much like my favourite analogy, the ant colony. Where does the guiding intelligence/consciousness come from? The term “swarm intelligence” comes to mind in the context of this analogy – following the line that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. But of course that does not exclude the possibility of God as the original designer of cellular intelligence.

This deseign requires lots more than cells thinking. My comment was ignored: "Comment: pure initial design. If this required stepwise development over massive amounts of time, hunting animals would not have survived to evolve the process."

QUOTE: It's an ability so important to survival that evolution has hardwired it into our nervous system.'"

dhw: David doesn’t believe in the quest for survival as a determining factor for evolutionary innovation. And he doesn’t believe that it is natural that something important for survival should itself survive.

Survival is important in and of itself. It doesn't create speciation.

DAVID: pure initial design. If this required stepwise development over massive amounts of time, hunting animals would not have survived to evolve the process.

dhw: How massive is massive? It is perfectly possible that a nerve’s rudimentary sensitivity to light should be advantageous, and that in time, increased sensitivity should prove even more advantageous. Even now, different animals have different degrees of vision, hearing and smell. Do you think your God kept stepping in to adjust them all?

Pure Darwinist think. The fossil record does not how gradualism, remember?