More "miscellany" (General)

by dhw, Wednesday, April 20, 2022, 07:53 (709 days ago) @ David Turell

Immunity system complexity:

dhw: […] 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.

DAVID: There is no evidence the ability is inherited. All we've got is epigenetics and the studies are at best equivocal according to a recent review.

What “evidence” is there that your God programmed every immune response 3.8 billion years ago, or that he issues ad hoc instructions whenever a new problem arises? Once again: we are proposing theories, and once again I am not asking you to believe this one, but asking you to recognize that it is possible, as below:

Puzzling epigenetics

QUOTE:'Epigenetics has this double function: They’re inheritance systems, but they’re also response systems.You respond to the environment not by waiting for a mutation but by changing the way you express your genes.”

"Another major question that biologists are beginning to face is whether multigenerational epigenetic inheritance happens in vertebrates. Although scientists have found tantalizing clues that this might be happening in mammals, and even in humans, many scientists remain unconvinced.”

DAVID: This won't satisfy dhw's desires for bacteria's DNA editing ability to be widespread in advanced animals or plants.

I am more than satisfied. The two bolds make it clear that science is taking very seriously the possibility that the autonomous mechanism you say exists in bacteria “might be happening in mammals”. Thank you for this encouraging news. My “desire”, however, is to find feasible explanations for life’s higgledy-piggledy history, always allowing for your God as designer of life and the mechanisms for evolution. See the next two entries (for which again I thank you):

Sex lures

QUOTE: “ […] the 180 or so Arisaema species look like just a merry reminder of evolution’s endless weirdness.

DAVID: the steps to create this include, a physical trap design, a pheromone that is correct and digestive enzymes with protections for the plant itself. Irreducibly complex, it must be designed.

I presume you mean that your God designed it (as opposed to design by autonomous cellular intelligence). But “evolution’s endless weirdness” just doesn’t seem like the result of a single-minded pursuit of the single “goal of evolving (= designing) humans” plus our food. No wonder you can’t explain this theory of yours.

How redwoods adapt for water

dhw: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?

DAVID: I think He helped them with adaptive designed speciation.

Sounds impressive, but my question was how he helped, not what he helped them with, so please answer the question. And since you believe that everything he designs is “part of the goal of evolving (= designing) humans” and their food, do you think the human species would die out if the redwood couldn’t collect water?

STEM CELLS

dhw: 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.

DAVID: The only way a new species can appear is with edited DNA. I can't alter the facts to fit your desires. ID doesn't know the mechanics of How a designer does it any more than anyone else.

Of course the DNA has to be edited. My inquiry simply concerned the possible role played by stem cells in evolutionary changes, since these are the cells that can transmute themselves into different forms. Again, no “desires”. Even your God would have had to know which cells to fiddle with.

An attack on modern science

DAVID: We've been here before with Ruth Kastner. ( dhw, 2013-08-16, 17:00) We feeble humans cannot figure out what God did.

If I remember rightly, my objection was to the claim that quantum reality is “more real” than our everyday reality, to which my standard reply is: step in front of a moving bus and then let me know your conclusions.


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