Cellular intelligence (Evolution)

by dhw, Tuesday, February 08, 2022, 07:38 (801 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: You totally ignore the problem of three new DNA inputs in the new big skull problem. God cannot invent an independent mechanism to make the separate DNA's communicate in any meaningful fashion.

Yet again: Instead of your God expanding a group of brains, skulls and birth canals simultaneously overnight, or preprogramming the overnight switch 3.8 billion years ago, I propose that 1) skull cells cooperate in RESPONDING as the brain expands, 2) mummy and daddy DNA gets mixed together (bigger brains are heritable); and 3) the only “communication” between cell communities is when birth canal and surrounding bones and muscles coordinate to accommodate (RESPOND to) the new size. It would have taken generations for ALL individual brains, skulls and birth canals to make these adjustments, and this would certainly have caused problems initially, and does so even today (childbirth is painful and can be fatal), but in due course the new sized or shaped brain, birth canal and pelvis would have become the norm. No overnight operations, no impossible communications, but new conditions requiring new responses, just as new species emerge when and not before conditions have changed.

dhw: I suggest that the new cells are necessary to meet a new requirement, and the same cells continue to be used – through complexification – until once more their number needs to be increased to meet the next major new requirement.

DAVID: Ignoring not many new neurons are immediately used.

dhw: I didn’t know you had witnessed each phase of brain expansion and observed which neurons were not used. And my theory is not a “no-God scenario”!

DAVID: A non-answer. Early sapiens did not use their brain as we do, the same brain!

Of course not. Our brain has thousands more requirements to cope with, and that is why the SAME CELLS have complexified! Why would new cells be added just to lie around doing nothing?

You keep focusing on the brain in your efforts to prove that your God speciates in anticipation of changing conditions (though it isn’t even an example of speciation). This theory has now been discredited, and this whole discussion is a repeat of the thread on brain expansion, which ran from April 2020 until October 2020!

Fire spot

DAVID: Your love of complexification is pure confusion. The advanced use of a new need, like London cabbies results in a thickened complexified area!!! That is a tiny example of enlargement, but we also know modern heavily used brains shrank 150 cc and also had London cabbie regions!!!

dhw: Yes, the odd instance of enlargement provides clear evidence that enlargement is also an autonomous process independent of your God’s involvement. Thank you for remembering that. But most of our requirements are met by autonomous complexification, not autonomous expansion. And shrinkage, yet again, is caused by the fact that cells which had been useful in the past are no longer needed because complexification has proved so efficient that it has made them redundant.

DAVID: So you have decided complexification is not a God-given mechanism?

A silly distortion. Quite apart from glossing over the evidence of autonomous expansion and my explanation of shrinkage, you again ignore my statement and question on 4 February: “…my theory allows for your God as the designer of the mechanisms for complexification and expansion. […] If he can design cells to establish their own connections, why should it be impossible for him to enable them to add to their numbers and enable the skull to adjust accordingly?” You never answered.

dhw: Why do you think the brain is now “fully” used? […]

DAVID: We have added uses and knowledge for 315,000 years and it shrunk. Facts say it can handle any new use.

On shrinkage, see the bold above. Let’s not forget your own theory: that your God blundered: three-quarters of the cells he gave us 315,000 years ago were apparently never used! And if our brain is going to handle new uses in the future, how can that mean it is now “fully used”?

Cellular intelligence (at last!)

DAVID: The studies clearly show the inner workings of cells on information in their genome they follow.

dhw: The studies clearly show that some cells remain the same and some can change, and the latter sometimes appear to act intelligently […] the studies show that cells absorb, process, remember, communicate and act on the information they absorb. You believe your God provided them with instructions, some scientists believe the above processes denote autonomous intelligence, and I suspect many scientists would rather not delve into the possible source of what appears to be intelligence. Please stop kidding yourself that your theory is the norm.

DAVID: Enter ID to see their norm.

dhw: I was not aware that ID-ers now represented the norm in the scientific world. In any case, cellular intelligence and ID are not incompatible.

DAVID: Many Ph.D. folks are in the ID corps. They all accept so-called cell intelligence is from God's design.

What a revelation! After your claim that your rejection of the theory is the norm, apparently even ID-ers accept it! And of course they recognize that it’s compatible with belief in a designer. Thank you for this honest admission, which makes your dismissal of the theory even more blinkered.