Cellular intelligence (Evolution)

by dhw, Wednesday, March 16, 2022, 11:23 (981 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: […] do you think [your God] deliberately planned life as a “constant war to survive by eating”? Or do you think he was unable to devise a system that did not demand war? Please answer.

DAVID: I think you have invented a pacifistic complaint about God. What would humans be like as pastoral animals? An aggressive nature produces progress. I'm delighted with God's approach. Life started with bacteria attacking each other. Passive plants were much later as food, although the Venus flytrap is not passive.

Presumably this means you think your God deliberately designed life to be a “constant war to survive by eating”. If so, I would suggest that instead of individually inventing all the different “good” and “bad” bacteria and viruses, and all the different strategies for eating and not being eaten, and all the different innovations for attack and defence in this great, ongoing, ever complexifying war for survival, your God created the mechanism whereby organisms did their own designing. After all, you guess that he is so kind as to give us solutions to some of the problems caused by his “bad” bacteria and viruses and what you see as the “errors” he could not avoid in his design of life. The concept of a free-for-all war would certainly be more interesting for him to watch than what you regard as “pacificistic” and “pastoral”, and maybe he even shares your own apparent delight in aggression.

Carnivorous plants
dhw: You tell us that all aspects of carnivorous plants’ immunity must have been created at the same time. I have pointed out that both bacterial and human immunity take time to develop, since vast numbers may die before a “cure” is found. If God gave them and us instructions right from the beginning, why do so many die before we and bacteria can find the cure? Every death makes it blindingly obvious that the disease and the protection did not arrive simultaneously.

DAVID: A totally distorted misunderstanding of immune systems. Most organisms appear with fully intact immune systems, but must build an antibody library as each new attack appears. No attack, no answer! Mammals are different. Immune systems must develop, and colostrum in milk provides protection until innate immunity starts.

Despite my “totally distorted misunderstanding”, thank you for confirming my view that each new attack requires a new response, as opposed to your God having already issued instructions in advance. The library grows with each new response, i.e. the disease and the protection do not arrive simultaneously.

Cell complexity increases
QUOTE: …it functions more like a chip that processes many signals simultaneously over a very small area. "This is very important for neurons, for example, as it allows them to process different signals at each of their various protrusions: one site can be activated while another lies dormant and a third is inhibited," he says.

DAVID: Please note that all of this complexity is presented as automatic reactions
And:
DAVID: ….because of the demonstrated automaticity, we can use it to manage therapeutic measures. Cells are designed to work automatically. They just look intelligent.

The complexity can only be described in terms of actions and reactions. It would be totally impossible to observe the intelligence that guides those actions and reactions. If you were to study the responses of your legs and feet to the demands of playing football, of course they would be automatic. But you can’t study the intelligence that makes all the instant decisions which guide the legs and feet.

Bird migration

QUOTE: "Migratory birds’ navigational input comes from several senses—mainly sight, smell and magnetoreception. By observing the apparent nighttime rotation of the stars around the North Star, the birds learn to locate north before they embark on their first migration, and an internal 24-hour clock allows them to calibrate their sun compass. Characteristic smells can help birds recognize places they have visited before. Scientists know a great deal about the detailed biophysical mechanisms of the birds’ senses of sight and smell. But the inner workings of their magnetic compass have proved harder to understand.

DAVID: to put this together from a design standpoint, I cannot believe these birds figured out how and where to migrate naturally. It is logical to want a warm spot in winter, but birds don't think at that level. And they don't follow maps. They migrate by instructions in their brains, as we know according to the article.

That is not what the above quote tells us. They “observe” and “learn” and “calibrate” and use smell to “recognize” places. These actions don’t denote “instructions”, although it stands to reason that each generation will use the knowledge already gained from its first migration. “Magnetoreception” is the problem area for our understanding, but as with other organisms, these birds may well have certain faculties which we don’t have and which naturally open up areas of knowledge that we have to acquire by indirect means.