Cellular intelligence: (Evolution)

by dhw, Friday, January 14, 2022, 09:15 (1042 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: You have never understood how humanized your God appears to be […]

dhw: […] 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?

DAVID: None of this convinces me your God is not part human.

“Part human” is a strange way of putting it. I am proposing, just as you once did, that your God has thought patterns and emotions and logic similar to ours, and that we mimic him in certain ways. Not surprising, as it seems highly unlikely that we would be the inventors of thought patterns, emotions etc. that were unknown to an all-knowing God.

xxxx

DAVID: "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."

dhw: 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.

DAVID: Same illogical complaint.

Having ignored it yet again, perhaps you will now once and for all explain why a God with the single “goal” of designing humans plus their food would first of all design countless life forms and foods that had no connection with his single goal.

Antibiotic resistance
DAVID: If only one system would work, He had to use it. Why not respond to my theory directly instead of inventing your weak form of God making life.

Once again: your all-powerful God is forced to design a system containing errors he did not want and could not correct. And yet you agreed this was the system he wanted! What is weak about a God who designs precisely the system he wants, as opposed to being forced to design a system containing errors he doesn’t 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.

dhw: 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”.

DAVID: You have forgotten how immunity works. B and T cells automatically identify non-self, add an antidote and a new antibody is automatically added to the library.

You have forgotten that it is only your belief that these processes occur automatically. You have agreed over and over again that the cells appear to be intelligent, and once you wrote that “those molecules literally act as if they have minds of their own”. How do you know they don’t? And still I wait for you to add attributes to my list of those that convince you humans ARE autonomously intelligent.

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: […] non-random mutation is anti-Darwin and consistent with ID.

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

DAVID: Saving Darwin as usual. Survival as a driving force for speciation is unproven theory.

I was merely pointing out that the quote took the theory for granted, as do many people since it is such an obvious motive for both adaptation and speciation.