Let's study ID: giraffe plumbing (Introduction)

by David Turell , Sunday, October 03, 2021, 16:23 (1145 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: The various geological ages are sharply demarcated all over the world. The key point that you palaver around is the sharp sudden appearance of the Cambrians without any type of even partial precursors. China has revealed many new Edicaran forms, nothing close to the first Cambrians. And yes, the biological forms don't adhere exactly to the demarcations. Doesn't change the obvious huge gap in form and function.

dhw: I keep repeating a possible explanation for the “sudden appearance” of new species, and your only response so far has been that I ignore the “sudden appearance” of new species! Once more: 1) What you call the “start” of the Cambrian may cover tens or even hundreds of thousands of generations. This is not “sudden”. 2) We cannot expect a step-by-step fossil record of species that lived 550+ million years ago. 3) We cannot know all the changes that took place in local conditions 550+ million years ago (and I suggest that speciation takes place in response to changing conditions).

Your explanation for sudden appearance, which you say you accept, then devolves into a mish mosh of why it can't be sudden. You have not explained Darwin's gap, because it hasn't gone away. The gap in form and function from simple Edicarans to the first Cambrians is entirely unexplained and quite real. Active research in the very complete Chinese shale beds has not reduced the gap.

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

dhw: How do you know?

DAVID: Todays' cells don't change.

dhw: There is no new speciation happening today, and nobody knows how it happened in the past. But scientists keep revealing how certain cells, e.g. stem cells, are capable of an almost infinite variety of changes to their structure and function.

Stem cells are designed with a purposeful function to create cells with purposeful function. Without them there is no embryology from fertilized egg. What is your point, if any?

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: […] 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.

DAVID: In a general way I view immune systems as starting with bacteria and their CRISPR defense. As evolution advanced in designed stages the multicellular immune systems developed also.

dhw: If the systems developed stage by stage, the process was ongoing, i.e. accumulative. And yet your God did NOT dabble, and instructions were not programmed 3.8 bya.

DAVID: Pre-programming and dabbling are generalized descriptive terms, not exact as the designed stages concept. Instructions to make antibodies are in the general: if any invader comes along, add XYZ to one of its proteins to make it die. Nothing is in the specific.

dhw: So your God did not issue specific instructions on how to recognize every new invader and how to devise the necessary antibodies. He just told the cells that they must recognize the invader and add XYZ to one of their proteins, then left it to them to do the necessary. And how would they know which XYZ to add, in order to fight an enemy they had never seen before, with “no thought involved”?

The XYZ additions are all the same. When added they kill. There is not the complexity of a dictionary of differences. Your immune system recognized Covid vaccine just like all the vaccines you took in the past. Yet they are nothing like any previous vaccines invented by man. Same natural response to an unnatural vaccine. All provided by God's design developed during evolution, no dabble necessary

DAVID: […] God's immune cell system is a generalized response. No Britannica of different ways to do it!!! All the same and very direct.

dhw: Hardly direct if you have an unknown number of unknown invaders, and all your God has done is tell the cells to find the right solution to the problem! You wrote that “cells are able to make an entire library of antibodies to all that come along”. How does a “generalized response” turn into a library of specific responses with no specific instructions from your God and yet with “no thought involved”?

Again, the cells recognize a foreign protein, simply because it is foreign, and add a killer segment to it. Always the same segment. It is a complexly designed system that keeps it
simple!!! That is how immunity works