Cellular intelligence (Evolution)

by dhw, Tuesday, March 29, 2022, 11:11 (968 days ago) @ David Turell

How cells communicate

DAVID: God's immune systems works perfectly, but some bugs (covid) are tough to beat. Be reasonable in your views. God is not ALL BAD.

dhw: How can you say it works perfectly when millions of people die because the immune system cannot cope with your God’s specially designed bugs? This does not mean God is ALL BAD! It means that there is a problem for people who think he is all good (theodicy). Your solution to the problem appears to be to pretend that there is no problem. Is that what your books have taught you?

DAVID: I have never pretended there is no problem. We've had months of theodicy discussions.

dhw: See above: “God’s immune system works perfectly….” and “99+% of all of us are just fine. My glass is full, yours half empty.” Not much of an answer to the question of why – according to you - your God chose to design bugs that kill millions of people, is it?

DAVID: Bacterial warring way spills over on us when bugs get into the wrong places. Life started with bacteria and viruses fighting. […]

dhw: […] So your all-powerful God created nothing but good bugs, only he was powerless to stop some of them turning nasty, but he presented cells with a list of instructions to deal with the nasty ones, only sometimes his instructions didn’t work, so he left it to humans to do what he, despite his omnipotence, was unable to do. Don’t you find this just a little odd?

DAVID: Your view is exceptionally odd. The bacteria which always do good are here since the beginning of life and those that play no necessary role for us didn't leave. WE must have those good ones and put up with the bad ones with our very efficient immune system. You want a perfection for God, and He can't give it to you in a warring living system at the necessary bacterial level. Religions view God as pure and perfect, but what He produced in life makes mistakes, which He obviously anticipated and corrected except, rarely when it isn't. We see molecular mistakes in life's processes and bugs where they shouldn't. Life is a dynamic homeostatic system with required high speed reactions. A rigid controlled system at the molecular level or at the organismal relationship level can't be all there is and have real life. We live with what we have to have.

Forgive me, but you are simply repeating at length the fact that you believe your all-powerful God to be incapable of providing a system without war (bolded). You confirm that the system he designed makes mistakes which despite his omnipotence he sometimes couldn’t correct, and you repeat your belief that “real” life would be impossible if everything worked perfectly. My personal view of an all-powerful God is that he would design what he wanted to design, and so the system we have is the system he wanted. I’m sorry if that seems exceptionally odd to you.

Zombies

DAVID: We've seen this many times before. Think leaf-chewing ants and fungus. We are just another of ways viruses fight to survive. All part of the biological warfare in our form of life.

Just to clarify: You are absolutely right, the system your God designed is riddled with such warlike examples. Why do you think your kind God designed such horrifying methods of survival? Or do you think maybe he allowed viruses to work out their own ways to survive? And while you ponder these questions, do you think the zombification of caterpillars is part of the goal of evolving humans and our food?

Stem cells

QUOTE: "Self-generated gradients have now made sense of perplexing behavior in cancer cells, fish embryos, immune cells, bacteria, slime mold, and more — and findings are accumulating rapidly."

DAVID: I simply imagine each cell has a GPS system with the proper endpoint presented which they must follow. Just like we use in our cars to reach an intended destination. The designer at work.

Why do you think your God designed a GPS system for cancer cells?

Riboswitches

DAVID: Another of God's designed switch mechanisms for precise controls. Note the required speed! Not surprising, a mistake can happen. dhw doesn't understand the import in theodicy discussions.

Answered above, in the paragraph beginning “Forgive me…”