Let's study ID: giraffe plumbing: cognition (Introduction)

by dhw, Tuesday, October 26, 2021, 13:50 (910 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: You wrote: “Of course the brontosaurus is not directly connected to us.” So are you telling us your God could not have designed us and our food without first designing the brontosaurus and its food?

DAVID: I'm telling that is what God did.

So your God designed the brontosaurus and its food. Now please tell us in what way the brontosaurus and its food, with no direct connection to us, were part of his goal to evolve us and our food.

DAVID: In biochemistry evolution was totally continuous.

dhw: But according to you, we are descended from life forms which your God created without any precursors! […].

DAVID: You are asking the wrong questions of me. I view evolution as common design in which Darwin claimed was common descent looks like much the same.

You have previously expressed your belief in common descent, with a continuous line from bacteria to humans, except for the Cambrian, which produced new species without any precursors. And you think we are descended from the latter, so there’s no continuous line from bacteria to humans. Please explain the contradiction. See later for “common design”.

Immunity system complexity
On the theory of cellular intelligence, you wrote:
DAVID: None in the present literature. All found by you in much earlier entries years ago: "McClintock, Margulis, Shapiro, Albrecht-Buehler" your favorite go-to's for opinion, not any fact.

You yourself then went on to quote an essay published last week, explicitly supporting the concept of cellular intelligence. You have ignored it. I then pointed out to you that intelligence is manifested in all the processes that lead to a decision on what action is to be taken, and only then does automaticity take over as the decision is implemented. Again you have totally ignored this. Your only response is:

DAVID: You are again forgetting that we are all outside cells looking in. The odds for intelligent or looking intelligent are still 50/50, and only one mechanism is the real one.

Do you now agree that the theory is NOT confined to past literature, that cognition does NOT mean automaticity, and that there is a major distinction between intelligent decision-making and the automatic implementation of decisions? Even your 50/50 should mean that the theory of cellular intelligence should at least be taken just as seriously as your own theories.

Common design
QUOTE: "To say that similarities prove common descent ignores a logical possibility: that common features may instead be due to a common design strategy.”

Why instead? If God exists, and if – as you believe – he designed every species, then it would make perfect sense for him to use the same design strategy as he created the vast bush of life forms, most of which had no connection with humans. It also makes perfect sense for intelligent cells to build on the features already developed by their predecessors.

QUOTE: "Neo-Darwinism led evolutionists to assume that most of our DNA would prove to be junk left over from evolution's trial-and-error process [etc.]

Dealt with over and over again: Darwin’s principle of natural selection explains why what is useful is preserved.

DAVID: As I have pointed out previously, a designer will make complex processes in advance of major steps and then use those complex processes in combination to jump gaps in phenotypical design as in the Cambrian gap. What God did was use a design system which resembles common descent as described by Darwin.

If God exists, this is perfectly feasible, and does not contradict the theory of common descent. Your problem is the two gross contradictions at the start of this post.

DAVID: dhw's illogical complaint that God didn't use precursors at the Cambrian gap is out the window.

It is you who insisted that God didn’t use precursors!!!!!!! That is why in the past, you have done nothing but emphasize the gaps! I have followed Darwin in proposing that the gaps are in the fossil record, but I have added the possibility suggested by Shapiro that intelligent cells are capable of the major innovations that lead to speciation. If your God can add new bits and pieces to existing bits and pieces, then I propose (theistic version) that he can also invent a mechanism which can do the same.

DAVID: as noted, lots of old preparations for a camera eye. Designed evolution is step by step. So much for dhw's illogical worry about precursors and phenotypic 'Darwin gaps.'

If by designed evolution you mean separate creation of species by God, you are once more stuck with the two illogical theories (disconnected anthropocentrism and continuity without precursors) pinpointed at the start of this post. If by designed evolution you mean that your God created the mechanism whereby all life forms – as indicated by the article you quoted and then ignored – are possessed of certain autonomous cognitive abilities (intelligence), and if you accept that they may be capable of innovation, then you have a perfectly logical explanation of the vast and ever-changing bush of forms and foods which constitutes the actual history of life on Earth.