Cellular intelligence (Evolution)

by dhw, Friday, January 21, 2022, 07:56 (1035 days ago) @ dhw

Again our threads are overlapping, so I’m reopening this one and juxtaposing certain posts.

DAVID: One set of cooperating neurons is not the same as skull bone cells anticipating the size needs of a suddenly grown brain. No comparison!

dhw: Just as the cooperating cells for complexification RESPOND autonomously to new requirements (e.g. learning new skills), the cooperating cells of the skull would also RESPOND autonomously to new requirements (e.g. to accommodate the additional cells needed to learn new skills). That is the whole point of cellular flexibility – to respond to new requirements.

DAVID: You haven't answered the problem posed! The bone cells must know what the brain size has enlarged into. How does your imagined cooperation work? Please tell me a coherent theory, not platitudes.

It works through what I believe is known as communication. Cells communicate, as you have shown in countless articles that you have reproduced here. In your excellent book The Atheist Delusion, you quoted James Shapiro: “Living cells…are cognitive (sentient) entities that act and interact purposefully to ensure survival, growth and proliferation. They possess sensory, communication, information-processing and decision-making capabilities.” Even if you don’t believe it, please don’t tell me that it’s not a possible answer to “the problem posed”.

dhw: But you have your God designing a 3.8-billion-year-old computer programme for a group of brains/birth canals to expand at a given moment 3+ billion years later, before the expansion is even needed. Or alternatively popping in to perform operations on each of those brains/birth canals, to prepare them in advance of conditions/requirements that don’t yet exist. Please add on every other evolutionary development, lifestyle, natural wonder, econiche etc, and perhaps you will understand why these two concepts strain my credulity.

DAVID: Not the point of the current discussion, but if God is the designer, He does it in His own way. I've made my guesses and I've read your humanized theory of God. we differ.

Of course it’s the current point at issue. I find your programming and your dabbling theories almost impossible to believe. I ask why, if your God gave cells the intelligence to complexify autonomously in response to new requirements (not in anticipation of them) , he couldn’t also have given cells the ability to expand autonomously to meet new requirements, but you don’t answer. And I can’t see what is “humanizing” about the invention of flexible, intelligent cells.

DAVID: [under “Biochemistry"…] all new conditions allow exploitation as more oxygen allowing more organismal complexity.

And so you agree that conditions change BEFORE organisms (cell communities) change. Cell communities do not change IN ANTICIPATION of new requirements.

DAVID: God made sure by designing photosynthesis there would be enough oxygen for complex animals. Conditions changed to allow Cambrian forms. We agree….

At last!

DAVID: ...but I've presented plenty of evidence of the opposite, as the simplest example of preparation for future use, our brain.

You have produced no evidence at all. See above.You agree that complexification is the brain cells’ RESPONSE to new requirements, not an anticipation of them, and you have no evidence whatsoever that expansion was NOT a similar RESPONSE to the need for greater capacity.

Camels’ noses
DAVID: Great design, as usual better than the ones we make. Did this come with the original camelids? One can propose starting close to a desert and by slowly venturing out the design develops. But the complexity is precise and effective and I believe far beyond dhw's wishes for cellular intelligence. Cells just ain't that smart, even if given design ability by God as dhw always theorizes. A purposeful God sees established endpoints to development by evolution. Cell designers don't have God's foresight or His direct abilities. That makes dhw's designer cells as secondhand designers n ot llikely to give God the results He definitely wants.

Humans are currently creating forms of artificial intelligence that can work wonders. But as you say, these natural wonders are often better than the ones we make. Why do you think your all-powerful God is incapable of making a mechanism that can create better wonders than we can? Cellular intelligence – if it exists (it remains a theory) – would be totally different from ours, but every natural wonder is geared to the same concept of improving an organism’s chances of survival in whatever conditions it finds itself. The camel’s nose is a wonderful example of cells responding to the requirements of the environment. You insist that it was all preprogrammed 3.8 billion years ago, or your God popped in to perform an operation on camels’ noses even before they found themselves in the desert (your "foresight"). Of course the complexity is precise and effective, and I don’t have a problem with it developing as camels became more accustomed to life in the desert - just as whale flippers would have developed as they settled down to life in the water. If humans can invent mechanisms that perform wonders, why can’t God? And for good measure, do you really believe that your God specially designed camels’ noses as part of his one and only goal to design humans and their food?