Let's study ID: giraffe plumbing (Introduction)

by dhw, Sunday, October 10, 2021, 09:31 (1138 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: The Cambrian start all of our current phyla. […]

dhw: You have suddenly changed your mind: instead of us humans and our food being descended from bacteria, starting 3.8 thousand million years ago, your God apparently stepped in only 550 million years ago to dabble brand new lines of life (including ours and trilobites) from scratch. So if humans and our food were your God’s sole purpose right from the start, what was the point of all the extinct life forms that preceded the Cambrian (let alone all the extinct Cambrian [e.g. trilobites] and post-Cambrian forms [e.g. brontosaurus]) and had no connection with us and our food? Could it be that your God was experimenting, learning as he went along, getting new ideas? After all, producing brand new creations out of nothing, with no precursors, hardly suggests the continuity which is a constant theme in your assertion that ALL life forms were “part of the goal of evolving [= designing] humans” and their food.

DAVID: Same response: God started all life from no precursors.

Of course the very first life would by definition have had no precursors!

DAVID: The Cambrian is just another example of His powers. Yes we see discontinuity.

Just over a week ago, you wrote: “Designed Evolution means we are directly connected to bacteria by progressive designed stages.” But now: “The Cambrian start all of our current phyla” (which must include humans), and there are no precursors. You can’t have it both ways!

DAVID: Your exploration of God's mind constantly humanizes Him in your analysis as in the bold. In my view God knows exactly what to do and does it.

If he exists, then of course he knows what to do and does it. But even he can hardly design humans step by step starting from bacteria, and also design them step by step starting 3.X billion years later from the Cambrian. So maybe there is something wrong with your view of what he wants to do and how he does it.

Immunity system complexity
dhw: Cells recognize NEW invaders and produce NEW antibodies to fight them. And according to you, they do this without any intervention from your God. These two actions require COGNITION!

DAVID: Automatic cognition. They know self from non-self automatically. They know what is foreign. You get a splinter in skin. Inflammation always happens, but here only you can solve the problem with your tweezer.

dhw: You’ve got it. I am confronted with a new problem, I recognize it, and I produce the means of dealing with it. I agree that my feeling the pain is automatic. But my recognition of the cause of the pain and my working out a solution to nullify the cause require autonomous THOUGHT.

DAVID: Your brain is not your cells.

It was you who gave us the analogy! My brain automatically feels the pain, consciously recognizes the cause (splinter), and consciously produces the antidote (the tweezer)

DAVID: The inflammatory reaction is a standard body response to all insults, and is taught in the first day of med school pathology classes. Immune cells appear immediately, recognize non-self and begin automatic responses. Pus is purpose.

Yes, the inflammation is automatic. Why have you left out the conscious recognition of the splinter and the conscious use of the tweezer?

DAVID: If the production of antibodies always follows the same biochemical process and uses the same killer syz's, it is always automatic. What they add to kill or neutralize is always the same.
They know non-self and they know the answer before using it.

dhw: How can the immune system already “know” the answer to a problem it has never seen before?

DAVID: They know non-self!!!

Of course they do. Recognizing the non-self (splinter) is itself a conscious act of cognition, but it doesn’t provide the answer to the problem!

dhw: You seem to be going back to your God’s list of instructions for every new problem and solution, and all the cells have to do is pick out the right volume from the vast library God provided 3.8 billion years ago.

DAVID: No I haven't, and perhaps my explanations are not clear enough to get through your imposed belief in cell innate intelligence. Immune cells recognize foreign substances (non-self). Antibody response is always to kill or alter the invader by adding the same proteins to proteins in the invader. The library is used only for repeat invaders. Responses to new invaders simply add to the library.

You are merely repeating what I keep saying to you! Same process, but matching protein to protein is the addition to the library, and this accumulates throughout life. Each new invader requires a new antibody, and since your God does not intervene, the recognition and the production of the new antibody can only take place through autonomous thought.

DAVID: B and T cells are born with the instructions to make antibodies when stimulated by recognition of foreign proteins.

The “instructions” are the process. Once again: your God did not issue cells with instructions on how to produce every new antibody in anticipation of every new invader throughout life’s history. Hence the need for autonomous thought.