Cellular intelligence: (Evolution)

by David Turell , Saturday, December 18, 2021, 15:35 (853 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: Yes, all species can adapt, but are still the same species.

dhw: We are trying to explain speciation. Do you think it was sheer coincidence that oxygen appeared in large quantities and new species appeared at the same time? Or do you think the new species appeared BEFORE the increase in oxygen?

Coincidence doesn't speciate. Oxy gen was around in large amounts long before the Cambrian

T cells
DAVID: In any biological system mistakes happen.

dhw: They certainly do in any human use of “algorithms”, like the fiasco of last year, when an “algorithm” resulted in chaotic examination results over here. Who is responsible? The algorithm or the maker of the algorithm? However, let us not forget the possibility that your God may have WANTED a system that would result in death or the variations that account for all the “good” and “bad” that underlie the problem of theodicy.

DAVID: Who is responsible for metabolic mistakes, the algorithm or the maker in theodicy?

dhw: Algorithms don’t make themselves! It’s you who insist that your God provided life forms with instructions (algorithms) to solve every problem for the rest of life’s history. If his instructions have led to mistakes, then who else is responsible? But maybe he did not issue such instructions. Maybe he just provided all organisms (cell communities) with the ability (intelligence) to find their own “good” or “bad” means of survival.

What God did is in our imaginations, and depends upon the type of God in your mind when you suggest His actions, which I still see as very human, as in the decisions just stated..

DAVID: You've finally admitted looking into the future is important in understanding why new species are so changed. "Conditions that did not exist" don't apply when we consider the whale series or climbing out of trees, as simple examples of change.

DAVID: Pre-whales with flippers would never be on land. They have transitional legs in the water. Look at the fossils in the series.

dhw: Thank you for confirming that your God did not after all operate on pre-whales before there was any need for them to enter the water, and for agreeing that flippers developed in response to the new conditions. That is why I chose this example to illustrate the absurdity of your theory that changes take place BEFORE they are required.

Please look at the series before you declare absurdity. It is lots more changes than just flippers!!!

https://genesisapologetics.com/whales/

"When it comes to the number of changes to go from a land mammal to a whale, biologist Richard Sternberg remarked, “Just think of all the parameters that would have to be modified and then multiply that by a thousand fold or more than that—that’s the scale of the problem that you’re dealing with in the context of Darwinian evolution.”[viii] One of these complex changes would be moving the reproductive organs to inside the body and somehow cooling them when they’re right next to the swimming muscles that generate heat. Dr. Sternberg remarks that this system:

"Has a remarkable solution to that problem—it’s a miraculous web of arteries and veins, but can you explain it by some smooth gradualist textbook scenario, little change little change fixation? No—it doesn’t fit the Darwinian model in my opinion. You’re looking at just a suite of characteristics that had to have been integrated from the get-go. I mean it’s a non-gradualistic type of change. So the cooling system makes sense because you have internalized reproductive glands. The internalized reproductive glands, however, are a no-go unless you’ve got the cooling system. You can’t explain the emergence of one without the other."

DAVID: Sorry. I agree minor adaptations are local.

dhw: There is no reason why major adaptations and/or novelties should not also be local, and when the novelties prove useful, the species will not only survive but will also expand.

DAVID: Considered future use for dialysis units had predictable problems I could design around. Just like God preparing creatures for the future. Example, the whale blow hole on top of their heads, no nostrils, which would be under water.

dhw: Now what are you saying? Your God kept fiddling with transitional leggy-flippers until they became flippers, but before the same animals had entered the water, he had repositioned their noses to the top of their heads? May I suggest that it makes more sense if the blow hole – just like the flippers – developed as the cell communities worked out better ways for the ex-land animal to adapt itself to life in the water?

See quote above. Please study the whole story of whale development before commenting. I used the blowhole to represent the enormous number of required changes.