Cellular intelligence: (Evolution)

by dhw, Thursday, January 13, 2022, 09:47 (1043 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: You have never understood how humanized your God appears to be: He needs entertainment, He experiments as if not knowing where He is headed from the beginning of His creations, or He throws in free-for-all to let the process find its own ending even if not His!!! Your God has no sense of purpose, but your God wants entertainment as purpose.

I keep asking you not to use the word “need”, because this certainly weakens the image (a “needy” God). You have said he enjoys creating and is interested in his creations. That’s enough for me to suggest that his purpose may have been to create things he would enjoy creating and would be interested in watching. A free-for-all goes back to his wanting “to create something surprising and unpredictable to watch” (which included humans and the whole of evolution), and you replied: “I can’t disagree to this form.” Experimenting involves either having a fixed purpose (humans) and working out how to achieve it – the very opposite of having “no sense of purpose” – or the curiosity of finding out what would happen if he tried this or that combination. Why is it purposeless to set out to discover new things?) And why is all this more “human” than you telling us how kindly your all-powerful God is, trying to correct errors (but just like us humans, sometimes failing) because he doesn’t wish us evil, and enjoying creating, watching with interest, maybe wanting us to admire his work, and have a relationship with him? And why are you wrong when you say that in some ways we might mimic him?

xxxx

DAVID: I have only agreed that species modify to new changes as the same species.

Your usual volte face when challenged. Under “Oxygen” you wrote: “It is obvious more complex life forms were allowed to appear as more oxygen became available. […] You cannot design an organism dependent on oxygen if it isn’t present.”

DAVID: You keep ignoring my point God chose to evolve us from bacteria. All of evolution connected. Your constant illogical complaint slices it into disparate parts.

dhw: If God exists, he chose to evolve ALL life forms from bacteria, and the bush of life evolved into countless separate branches or “disparate parts”, most of which had no connection with humans.

DAVID: Same complaint, so my worthless answer in your eyes given again: […] From Jan. 10:
"The Earth is a giant restaurant. All life must have continuous energy supply to live. From the theodicy viewpoint it is impossible to create life not needing energy supplies. All organisms live in their own organized ecosystem, the complexities of which have been shown here. They have developed since the start of life and its diversification."

All absolutely logical, and I doubt if anyone – theist or atheist – would disagree. But you forgot to mention your illogical theory that every diversified life form and every diversified econiche, including all those that had no connection with humans, was part of your God’s one and only goal, which was to “evolve [= design] humans” and their food. You haven’t even mentioned humans. Please stop dodging!

Antibiotic resistance
DAVID: An all-knowing God knew which system for life would work and used it recognizing errors were probable.

dhw: That is not what you wrote, which was that he “designed the system He wanted that He knew would work”. This can only mean that he did not want "errors" he could not control, so they were not errors, and he did not try in vain to correct them. They are the consequence of freedom of choice, and what you and I consider to be a “bad” bacterium or a cell "going wrong" would, if it could talk our language, tell us that it’s simply finding its own way to survive - just like the "good" bacteria and cells which try to fight off the invaders.

DAVID: Of course it means he did not want the accompanying error potential…..

dhw: So you agree that he designed the system he wanted, but the system he wanted included things he didn’t want!

DAVID: He was willing to accept the errors since it was the only system available to use.

And so your all-powerful God was powerless to invent a system that did not contain errors he did not want, and which he tried but sometimes failed to correct, but this was “the system He wanted”, so He wanted the errors he did not want.

Biofilms
dhw: Please tell me what attributes, other than those listed, convince you that I am autonomously intelligent and am not an automaton.

DAVID: My points require answers that automaticity cannot create.

When new invaders threaten our immune system, just as my questions threaten your rigid and illogical beliefs, answers are required that automaticity cannot create. In both cases, new information must be perceived and processed, and decisions then taken as to how the new threat can be “answered”.

Mutations random or not
QUOTE: "The findings add a surprising twist to Charles Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection because it reveals that the plant has evolved to protect its genes from mutation to ensure survival".

DAVID: It has been found that DNA has hot spots of mutation, but non-random mutation is anti-Darwin and consistent with ID.

It is also consistent with cellular intelligence. It is worth noting that the motivation for the changes is survival, which is pro-Darwin.