Cellular intelligence (Evolution)

by dhw, Friday, March 11, 2022, 11:46 (986 days ago) @ David Turell

Immune system

DAVID: Life requires energy intake constantly.

dhw: Let’s focus on carnivorousness, which seems to me the cruellest method of obtaining energy. Do you think it is impossible for animals (including ourselves) to obtain energy without eating other animals? We can then broaden the question: did your God deliberately create a system whereby life forms had to wage constant war on each other, or are you saying it was an accident, or he couldn’t think of any other way of providing energy?

DAVID: I believe the current system of living biochemistry is the only one available to God. He had to choose the best.

Then let’s go one step at a time. You described life’s history as a “constant war to survive by eating”. Do you think it is impossible for animals (including ourselves) to obtain energy without eating other animals?

Evolution of consciousness (This article is a review)

QUOTE: They [the authors] argue that minds of a sort have existed since the first archaea colonized the planet, billions of years ago.

DAVID: Note 'minds of a sort'.

I do indeed note it. I can’t believe that anybody would equate a bacterial mind with a human mind, but it is what Shapiro calls “large organisms chauvinism” to claim that microbial life forms can’t think in their own different way.

dhw: Why would The AUTHORS say minds have existed since archaea, and then say that insects and bacteria do not have minds? I have bolded the apparent discrepancy.

DAVID: My answer below fits the problem.

I am pointing out that the reviewer says the authors believe bacteria have minds, and then later says that the authors believe that bacteria DON’T have minds. There must be something wrong with the review.

DAVID: You simply want to believe things that act intelligently are intelligent. Just remember thermostats.

dhw: Thermostats are irrelevant! They are ARTIFICIALLY intelligent designs made by NATURALLY intelligent humans (whose intelligence may have been provided by your God). How does that even begin to suggest that the NATURALLY intelligent designs of new organs, lifestyles, strategies and natural wonders could NOT have been made by NATURALLY intelligent cells (whose intelligence may have been provided by your God)?

DAVID: You simply do not understand secondhand design doesn't work.

You keep hiding behind the meaningless term “secondhand”. You believe your God gave humans the autonomous ability to design a thermostat. Why then can you not believe that he could give cells the autonomous ability to restructure themselves?

Carnivorous plant origin

DAVID: What controlled the 'whole operation' of coordinating new gene functions all at the same time. I cannot imagine this developed stepwise since partial change had no survival advantage. Back to God as the designer.

dhw: I don’t see why it had to be immediate. The “age-old” method of feeding need not have disappeared immediately. The carnivorous form of feeding may have taken over once it had perfected itself. Back to your theory: why do you think humans could not have evolved or found food without plants becoming carnivorous?

DAVID: Just part of an ecosystem.

Thank you. You have your God designing carnivorous plans as “just part of an ecosystem” – not as preparation for humans and their food and as part of his one and only goal of evolving humans and their food.

DAVID: Again you ignore 'stepwise'. Just saying it perfected itself means you do not understand the problem. The parts all have to work together or the eating system is worthless.

Again you ignore the possibility that such changes may entail old systems continuing to work in tandem with the new system until the latter finally takes over. On the other hand, I find it excruciatingly difficult to believe in a 3.8-billion-year-old computer programme for certain plants suddenly to switch to meat-eating, and I have the same problem imagining your all-powerful God suddenly popping in at various times to insert various meat-eating mechanisms in various plants as preparation for humans and their food millions of years later.