Cellular intelligence (Evolution)

by dhw, Tuesday, March 08, 2022, 09:24 (770 days ago) @ David Turell

The immune system

dhw: [...] 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?

dhw: 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.

DAVID: I recognized the need to eat a long time ago, well before you would recognize it. The life God designed has to eat. How could any thing else happen, meaning everyone lives by eating others.

I doubt if even a child would fail to recognize the need to eat. But what some people might fail to recognize is that evolution is the history of different life forms developing different methods of finding their food and of preventing themselves from becoming food. I know of one person who thinks that evolution is the history of God designing all life forms and natural wonders for the one and only purpose of designing humans and their food.

dhw: 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.

DAVID: Every organism has an immune system or there would be no life. Your tortured view gives your god a weird uncontrolled outlook or lack of purpose. Repeat: our Gods are totally different. I'm happy with mine.

Of course every organism has an immune system, and every organism is under threat from other cells/cell communities that threaten it. If you think your God created the cells which attack and the cells which defend, why is it weird to assume that he wanted the conflict? Back to theodicy: what do you think was his purpose in creating what you have called “the constant war to survive by eating”?

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.

dhw: 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.

DAVID: What it really means is the system He designed can make mistakes, all discussed before.

If your all-powerful God gives instructions which don’t work, or he tries unsuccessfully to solve problems and so leaves it to us to achieve what he can’t achieve, don’t you think you’re kind of belittling him?