Cellular intelligence (Evolution)

by David Turell , Tuesday, February 08, 2022, 15:16 (1017 days ago) @ dhw

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.

dhw: 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...No overnight operations, no impossible communications, but new conditions requiring new responses, just as new species emerge when and not before conditions have changed.

So the fossil skulls show no gaps? 200cc, almost seven ounces of size ignored.

DAVID: Early sapiens did not use their brain as we do, the same brain!

dhw: 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?

The specialized five layer prefrontal and frontal cortex was relatively unused conceptually until recently. Most of the brain did not change uses when the new frontal area appeared. What enlarges is what matters.

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.

dhw: 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.

You are ignoring the very complex specialized five-tier arrangement seen only in our brain, and you think our neurons knew how to design it. God would have to give precise building instructions. Cells cannot design new complexity by themselves. Complexification is simply a reorganization of what exists, new connections appearing between neurons

Cellular intelligence (at last!)

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.

dhw: 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.

ID hides God, but He is understood to be the designer. Cells automatically follow instructions in the information in the genome