Cellular intelligence (Evolution)

by dhw, Wednesday, February 09, 2022, 09:16 (1016 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.

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.

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

As usual, you dodge from one subject to another. I have just dealt with the “big skull problem”, so you switch to the gap! I have offered you an explanation umpteen times, not just of our 200 cc, but of ALL stages of brain expansion.

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?

DAVID: 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.

The key to this is your use of the word “relatively”. You keep saying your God provided sapiens with cells that were not used until thousands of years later because he put them there in preparation for future concepts. (In fact he gave us too many, because we discarded 150 cc!) I don’t believe there were any cells, including cortex cells, that were not used. I propose that our new concepts would have resulted in existing cells complexifying. (And shrinkage happened when complexification made some hitherto useful cells redundant.)

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. […]

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.

DAVID: 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.

You say the same about every complexity that ever took place during the whole history of speciation: God had to design every individual organ, development, stage, econiche, lifestyle, natural wonder etc. According to you, even the weaverbird’s nest is too complex for the weaverbird to have designed it!

DAVID: Cells cannot design new complexity by themselves. Complexification is simply a reorganization of what exists, new connections appearing between neurons.

New connections are the key! And you agree that the cells make these connections without your God’s intervention. And so perhaps you will at last answer my question: if your God could design a mechanism that enabled cells to complexify without his intervention, why do you think he could not have designed the same mechanism to cause enlargement (i.e. cells adding to their number without his intervention)?

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.

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

You have just told us that ID-ers accept cellular intelligence designed by God, and now you tell us that cells are not intelligent but follow instructions. What did you mean when you said that ID-ers “accept so-called cell intelligence” from God’s design, if you did not mean that they accept so-called cell intelligence from God’s design?