Let's study ID: giraffe plumbing (Introduction)

by dhw, Saturday, October 02, 2021, 10:42 (1149 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: I keep asking you how many million years you regard as being the “start” of the Cambrian, because even one million years is a huge period of time – ample for the development of new species once you accept the principle that organisms can change in response to different environments.

DAVID: It is not years of geology!!! When they look at the layers the early Cambrians are suddenly there on both sides of the demarcation. The gap is in the massive jump in forms. This is what you avoid discussing.

Please explain what you mean by “both sides of the demarcation”. (Are you just talking about the Grand Canyon?) Of course the gap is the massive jump in forms, but why “suddenly” if the appearance of all the different forms covers, let’s say, a million years? “Geological time” masks the fact that we are dealing with biology. Even if each generation needs, say, twenty years between reproductions (most need far fewer), you have 50,000 generations, and do we know precisely how stable local conditions were 550 million years ago? And how many fossils do you expect to have survived from 550 million years ago? This is what you “avoid discussing”. I’m not saying that this solves the Cambrian mystery. Nobody has solved it. But for those of us who believe in common descent, these factors alone – without even considering the possibility that cell communities respond intelligently to new conditions (i.e. they may well have produced comparatively sudden innovations) – make the mystery a little less mysterious. This explanation is certainly no more mysterious than that of an unknown and sourceless conscious mind “suddenly” popping in specially to invent new forms of life, the majority of which had no connection with humans although its only goal was to design humans.

DAVID: God did not give cells the power to change their form or functions.

How do you know?

Immunity system complexity
DAVID: The cells have one set of instructions to recognize every new invader and devise antibodies to fit that invader. No thought involved.

dhw: But if he didn’t preprogramme them 3.8 billion years ago, and he doesn’t dabble, when and how does he pass each new set of instructions on to the cells?

DAVID: At some point in evolution immune cells were created in multicellular organisms to act as I have described.

I have suggested that cells have an autonomous intelligence which recognizes new invaders and (sometimes) works out how to combat them. What you have described is cells being able to build up a library of antibodies throughout the life of the organism (which fits in with my suggestion), and yet your God has provided the cells with a “set of instructions to recognize each invader and to devise antibodies to fit that invader”. You have said that these instructions were not preprogrammed 3.8 bya, but were not dabbled either. Please explain when and how you think your God passed on the instructions, and how cells are able to choose - “no thought involved” - the correct volume from the library of instructions you say he has provided them with.