More "miscellany" (General)

by dhw, Tuesday, April 19, 2022, 07:07 (709 days ago) @ David Turell

Immunity system complexity:

dhw: I’ve repeated these quotes only in order to show the importance of combinations and cooperation. You believe bacteria (single cells) are able to adapt themselves autonomously to changing conditions. I suggest that if such single cells can do this autonomously, their descendants should also be able to combine and cooperate autonomously as they overcome or even exploit changing conditions (different challenges).

DAVID: The bold is a wish that is not seen at present.

dhw: It is not a wish but a proposal, and there is no way that we can “see” whether cells are making their own decisions, or are following your God’s 3.8-billion-year-old instructions or instructions that he issues ad hoc whenever a problem arises. Since you believe bacteria adapt autonomously, why do you consider it impossible for their descendants to do the same?

DAVID: There is no current evidence they do except in epigenetics research which may show minimal adaptations in the same species.

As above, there is no current evidence for your theory either. These are all theories formed as we try to extrapolate possible truths from what we know. In this case, though, I’m extrapolating a theory from what you believe: bacteria have the autonomous ability to change themselves. Since we believe all other life forms are descended from them, please tell us why it is not possible that they too have inherited this ability and enhanced it.

STEM CELLS

dhw: If one night your God came down and performed an operation on the legs of a group of sleeping pre-whales so that next morning they would wake up with flippers, which cells would he have restructured?

DAVID: Your answer is not all the DNA in cells in legs so they form a different phenotype of limb. I don't think that is the way a designer would do it. He would change the DNA in the fertilized egg so the embryologic mechanisms could make the new forms, by changing teh 'DNA in both sperm and egg.

If I’ve understood you correctly, this means our pre-whales would have entered the sea with legs, and their offspring would have popped out with flippers. I wonder what your fellow scientists and even fellow ID-ers would make of that theory.

How redwoods adapt for water

QUOTE: "Redwoods' ability to shift leaf types to match regional climatic differences may help them adjust to climate change in an ever-drier California."

DAVID: dhw will wonder why these trees exist. I accept they do.

dhw: I wonder why anything exists – that is the basic question that scientists and philosophers have been asking for centuries! But I think what you’re hinting at is the question of why, if your God’s one and only purpose was to specially design humans and their food, he would have specially designed redwood’s method of watering itself. My suggestion would be that like all other life forms, it found its own way to ensure survival, and if God exists, he would have provided the cells with the necessary intelligence. No doubt many other trees would not have survived in those conditions – some cells are more intelligent than others! Hence the ever changing higgledy-piggledy bush of life’s history.

DAVID: Your method of survival is Darwin's. In California the climate is semi-desert. Water supply is always a problem. My view is God helped.

I can’t recall Darwin proposing that tree cells worked out their own method of survival, but it doesn’t matter here anyway. We know water supply is a problem, or the trees wouldn’t have had to find this special way of collecting it. I don’t know what you mean by god “helped”. Either he gave them instructions or they worked it out for themselves. Or do you think he just popped in to tell them they’d find “water collection” on page 999,999 of the instruction manual?


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