Cellular intelligence (Evolution)

by dhw, Monday, March 07, 2022, 14:41 (782 days ago) @ David Turell

The immune system

DAVID: To repeat: immune cells recognize non-self, and automatically attach killing protein, and remember to do it in the future.

dhw: I suggest that if he exists, he gave cells the ability to work out their own solutions, though we know for a fact that in many cases they are unable to do so. Their intelligence is limited. And in your theory, somewhat surprisingly perhaps, your all-knowing God’s instructions are also limited.

DAVID: Yes, we get sick. Immune response is not immediate in success, but immune cells make antibodies to all attackers automatically.

dhw: That is your theory – though you also tell us that they obey your God’s instructions. So tell us why sometimes the immune system fails to produce antibodies, and we humans have to intervene.

DAVID: They always produce antibodies, but if they are not adequate for the job, now we can add antibiotics or antivirals.

dhw: So your God’s instructions are inadequate. So much for his all-powerful all-knowingness. But – assuming he exists – it all makes perfect sense if he designed cells to design their own means of survival, thus creating the vast variety of conflicts and of cooperative combinations, including those involving the sometimes victorious immune system and its sometimes victorious invaders.

DAVID: Back to theodicy from long ago. God gave us the antibodies to use! We only had to discover what molds and bacteria do to protect themselves in the constant war to survive by eating. Perhaps you would prefer a god who invented life not requiring new energy every day?

I’m pleased to see that you recognize “the constant war to survive by eating”, which your God – if he exists – must have deliberately designed. Your comment clearly shows that he gave different cells the means to protect themselves, and sometimes what we regard as the “goodies” win, and sometimes the “baddies” win. The outcome of this war is not predetermined, and I assume that an all-powerful God created exactly the unpredictable system he wanted to create. The immune system and its invaders seem to me to be a very good example of this as a general truth about evolution itself, which is the history of a constant struggle to “survive by eating”, in which cells collaborate to find different means of surviving in the “constant war” between different cells/cell communities and between cells/cell communities and their changing environments.

Engineering thru nature to fight cancer

DAVID: Maintaining active living cells and life's homeostasis is a constant requirement, which means maintaining life is on a knife edge for the occurrence of as genetic mistake leading to cancer. Luckily or purposely we have God-given brains to step in with new solutions.

Once again you have your all-powerful, all-knowing God – who you believe is too kind to deliberately create causes of suffering – providing instructions that can’t solve the problems, whereas we humans are clever enough to solve some of the problems he couldn’t solve.