Let's study ID: giraffe plumbing (Introduction)

by dhw, Monday, October 04, 2021, 11:25 (934 days ago) @ David Turell

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). [You left out the fourth factor, which is the theory of cellular intelligence.]

DAVID: Your explanation for sudden appearance, which you say you accept….

I did NOT say I accepted it! I described it as “a possible explanation”, and went on to say that “nobody knows how speciation took place, but this theory is at least as plausible as your own “palaver”.

DAVID: ...then devolves into a mish mosh of why it can't be sudden.

It is the sudden appearance of new species that constitutes your major argument!

DAVID: 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.

The gap is the sudden appearance of new forms without any known precursors. I have agreed that no one knows the answer, but I have offered a 4-point list of factors that might explain it, and your only response is to say that it is a “mish mosh”. Why don’t you respond to the points themselves?

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.

DAVID: 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?

Cells do change their form and functions. If they didn’t, there could be no evolution. If your God can change their form and functions, then he is perfectly capable of giving them the means to do it themselves.

Immunity system complexity
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”?

DAVID: The XYZ additions are all the same. When added they kill. There is not the complexity of a dictionary of differences. […] All provided by God's design developed during evolution, no dabble necessary.

How can the XYZ additions all be the same if the invaders are different? What is there to develop if the solution to the problem is always the same? If the cells obey instructions which were not preprogrammed from the very beginning, how can your God develop his design without dabbling? Yes, the PROCESS is the same: new invader, new antibodies. But the details have to change, and if your God has not issued instructions for every single detail and does not dabble, then the cell community has to work out the details by itself. Impossible without thought.

dhw […] 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”?

DAVID: 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.

In order to recognize something as foreign, you have to be aware of the difference between it and you. Sometimes cells make mistakes. Isn’t that often the problem with transplants? Recognition is a cognitive process. And as I understand it, the immune system must produce a specific new antibody to kill each specific new antigen. So what do you mean by the same killer segment?