Cellular intelligence (Evolution)

by David Turell , Tuesday, March 29, 2022, 16:55 (968 days ago) @ dhw

How cells communicate

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.

dhw: 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.

Yes, this is the system God wanted and probably had to do it this way as the only system that would work. He fully knew its warts and carefully gave us editing systems for molecular processes and immune systems for the warring aspects. Your complaints simply ask God to do it better. Accept that He can't.

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.

dhw: 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?

All part of God's plan. Certainly viruses are. And the zombie caterpillars are in their own necessary ecosystem.

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.

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

He didn't. Cancer cells are molecular genome mistakes using available normal systems to their advantage. I noted the neat switch trick using my GPS quote above from a different discussion.