Cellular intelligence: (Evolution)

by dhw, Saturday, January 15, 2022, 07:59 (1041 days ago) @ David Turell

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

dhw: “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.

DAVID: I'm in full agreement with your statement about God's thoughts and ours. It is your God's decisions and actions that are the present subject. Experimenting, Free-for-all evolution, needing entertainment area all signs of a weak humanlike form of a God.

I have no idea why you have suddenly decided that “humanizing” no longer refers to your use of such terms as “kindly”, or "interested” or “enjoy” or “wanting to have his work admired” or “to have a relationship with us”, though I do understand your burning desire to change the subject. I also have no idea why you regard experimenting to achieve a purpose or to learn something new, or creating something surprising and unpredictable (you agreed to this), as being weak. Or why a God who is forced to create a system containing errors he doesn’t want and can’t correct is stronger than a God who creates precisely the system he wants. (See below.) However, what is abundantly clear to me, and should be to you, is that all my theistic explanations of evolution’s history are more logical than his decision to create countless life forms plus ecosystems that have no connection with humans, although his only purpose according to you was to create humans plus their ecosystems.

The rest of this section is devoted to your repeatedly dodging the above bolded illogicality.

Antibiotic resistance
DAVID: Still ignoring my major point/theory: God used the only system that would work and does. He had to use it.

I keep pointing out that it is absurd to call your God all-powerful if he is forced to use a system that contains errors he does not want and cannot correct!

DAVID: Your usual dodge. An all-powerful, all-knowing God knows what can be done and does it. Your humanized God is now seems more powerful than mine!! He purposely creates a messy system, so He is not in full control.

You seem to forget that we’re both looking at the same system. Your all-powerful, all-knowing God has no choice and is forced to design a system with errors he doesn’t want and can’t correct. Apparently that makes him strong. My all-powerful, all-knowing God chooses to design this system because he wants the diversity that results from organisms having the freedom to find their own ways of surviving. Apparently that makes him weak! Errors that can’t be controlled apparently aren’t messy, but deliberately created diversity is.

Biofilms
dhw: 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.

DAVID: We both know humans are autonomously intelligent and at least I accept free will without question. Note the 'molecules' ACT AS IF. My statement does not say they are intelligent. You constantly twist statements.

My point was that if they act as if they are intelligent, how do you know they are not? Why have you ignored the question, which was the reason for my quoting you? I agree with you that we are autonomously intelligent, but you still haven’t offered one single attribute in addition to those I listed as evidence that cells are also 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: So you work at the level of 'taking for granted' to save Darwin's survival theory? Or do you recognize the problem with the theory?

I pointed out that the authors took it for granted, and so do many others, and frankly I have no idea why you think that organisms which undergo changes that will help them to get food to eat, to protect themselves from harm, to adapt to new conditions etc. do not undergo these changes for the sake of survival – whether they make the changes themselves or your God designs them. No, I don’t recognize the problem. Please tell me.

Pathogens fight hosts
DAVID: its eat or die out there. This is another example of the war over food supply. It has been and will be continuous in every ecosystem. [...]

Surprise, surprise. Yes, it’s eat or die. And yet you do not see survival as a key motive for evolutionary developments. Why do pathogens fight hosts and hosts fight pathogens, each of them coming up with new strategies, if it’s not for survival?