Cellular intelligence (Evolution)

by dhw, Sunday, March 20, 2022, 11:58 (977 days ago) @ David Turell

BLOOD BRAIN BARRIER CONTROLS

DAVID: God gave us great defenses. Developing defense systems on the fly takes too much time.

dhw: You have just agreed that the your God’s defence system proceeds stepwise, and unfortunately it is such that vast numbers of organisms can die before the system comes up with a cure. In fact sometimes, we ourselves have to step in to give it a hand. That doesn’t fit in too well with your image of an all-powerful, all-knowing God, does it? Whereas if he created an autonomous mechanism to handle attack and defence in the constant war to survive, inevitably there would always have to be winners and losers.

DAVID: Let's not go back to theodicy.

We are not discussing theodicy here, but the question of what your God did or didn’t design. Initially you claimed that he provided disease and cure simultaneously, but now you have agreed that the process is stepwise. Even then, you continue to insist that the cure has been provided by God’s instructions but you fail to acknowledge that it may take many deaths before the cure is found. This suggests to me that your all-powerful God did not provide instructions but – in line with your proposal that he deliberately created “a constant war to survive by eating” – gave organisms the means to work out their own ways of waging that war.

Bird migration

dhw: What's your theory?

DAVID: God. Another just-so wooliness theory. we are considering thousands of miles just to find a spot.

dhw: So why is it OK for God to choose a spot thousands of miles away, but just-so woolly if birds do it?

DAVID: Tell me a logical way for birds to decide on a winter resort over 10,000 miles distant and do it every year?

dhw: I told you last time. It would have originated with a search, and when a suitable spot was found, it was remembered and the details were passed on. Now would you please answer my bolded question.

DAVID: This doesn't answer the first attempt issue. How long would search birds last searching the whole Earth for a suitable feeding spot 10,000 miles away? Your answer is insufficient to prove your point.

They didn’t search the whole Earth! They stopped when they found a suitable spot, and some of them obviously did survive! Now please tell us why your God sent them 10,000 miles to find a suitable spot.

How cells communicate

DAVID: dhw how do cells exchange design ideas with these molecular signals?

dhw: These molecular signals are their language. If they can notify each other of threats, why should they not be able to notify each other of means to counter the threats, and of means to threaten others in what you call “the constant war to survive by eating”?

DAVID: Automatically responding by notifying is simply producing a molecular signal. how does that plan anything? All can modify by minor epigenetic editing, which does not mean forming new designs.

The molecular signal is the language they use to work out how to counter threats, or alternatively to do the threatening. We also use our language to convey our ideas. The language doesn’t create the ideas. Once more, their response is a reaction to existing conditions, and does not entail planning for conditions that do not already exist. You appear to accept that they are capable of making changes autonomously (i.e. without your God’s preprogramming or dabbling), and you continue to ignore my agreement that this autonomous ability “doesn’t necessarily extend to innovations. That is why we only have a theory and not a fact.”