Cellular intelligence (Evolution)

by dhw, Saturday, January 22, 2022, 12:59 (1034 days ago) @ David Turell

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.

dhw: It works through what I believe is known as communication. Cells communicate, as you have shown in countless articles that you have reproduced here. [See yesterday’s quote from Shapiro.]

DAVID: In skull and brain changes the Mother's cells must need to know in advance how big the new baby's skull is going to be. That is not cooperation but knowing what is coming.

The whole of evolution depends on the flexibility of cell communities. If they spoke English, the brain cells nowadays would say: “New idea. Gotta create new connection.” You have agreed that this happens with no intervention from your God. In the past, if there weren’t ENOUGH cells, they would have said: “We need more”, and the skull cells would have said: “They’re adding more, so we better make ourselves bigger,” and the birth canal cells would have said: “Ouch, baby brain bigger than expected - better make ourselves bigger”. No doubt there’d have been plenty of problems and deaths in childbirth before natural selection determined that the larger birth canals took over, and in fact it’s still a major problem. The cells have never found a perfect solution, which is forgivable, since they are not all-powerful and all-knowing (which of course is why so many species die out). In your theory, the flexible cell communities follow the same process of size and/or shape-changing, except that it’s done by your all-powerful, all-knowing God popping in and performing one-by-one operations on a group of women. (In my theory, the individual intelligent cell communities respond in the same way to the same conditions = convergence.) But your God apparently performed his one-by-one canal operations before those women got pregnant: in fact he restructured the relevant flexible cell communities even though some of the women may never have got pregnant at all. Weird.

dhw: 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: I've answered: God will not desire to reach His goals by handing off to the cells secondhand designing. Cells might not go in His desired direction unless He constantly instructs them.

How many goals has he got? You keep saying he only has one – us and our food. How do you know that his “desired direction” was not to create a vast, ever changing bush of life full of surprising and unpredictable life forms and natural wonders – which actually happens to be a pretty good description of life’s history. You simply answer my question by pretending you know what God does and doesn’t desire! When did he tell you?

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

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

DAVID: Only in a major gap like the Cambrian or plant bloom are the conditions prepared for a major change/advance.

So when pre-whale legs change into flippers, you now agree that it is in response to the new conditions and not in anticipation. And when skulls and birth canals expand, it is in response to the addition of cells/expansion of brains, and not in anticipation. Thank you.

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

dhw: At last!

DAVID: Note gaps only!!!!

Note: in ALL phases of evolution, from adaptation (in which even you have to agree that conditions change before organisms adapt to them) to innovation (in which even you ought to agree that new species are unlikely to be born BEFORE the changes in conditions under which they are to survive).

Camels’ noses
DAVID: […] the complexity is precise and effective and I believe far beyond dhw's wishes for cellular intelligence.

dhw: […] 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?

DAVID: I agreed camel's nose can be an adaptation.

Thank you. And so if your God didn’t pop in to operate on camels’ noses, but created a mechanism that would enable them to make what you yourself describe as “precise and effective” complexity, then (if he exists), he must have given the cells an autonomous mechanism to do their own designing of precise and effective complexities.