More "miscellany" PARTS ONE & TWO (General)

by dhw, Thursday, September 15, 2022, 12:15 (561 days ago) @ David Turell

CELLULAR INTELLIGENCE

dhw: If the odds are 50/50, and if your belief in a designer leads you to his endowing bacteria with autonomous intelligence, why can’t it allow for him to have endowed other cells/cell communities with autonomous intelligence?

DAVID: No evidence of it.

50/50, but intelligent behaviour cannot be regarded as evidence of intelligence? It can only be regarded as evidence of automatic obeying of instructions?

dhw: A direct question, then, just to clarify: Do you believe that 1) 3.8 billion years ago, he gave the very first cells specific instructions to pass on to all their descendants, telling them how to deal with every threat to all life forms for the rest of history?

DAVID: I don't know how much DNA code contained instructions in the beginning.

2) dhw: Whenever there was or is a new threat, he does a dabble to teach immune systems how to cope with it?

DAVID: The cells had instructions how to handle new invaders.

3) dhw: He designed an autonomous mechanism (cellular intelligence) enabling all organisms to work out their own responses to new dangers?

DAVID: Exactly.

So you agree that autonomous cellular intelligence works out how to respond to danger, but you don’t agree, because sometimes cells are obeying instructions issued 3.8 billion years ago, and sometimes God dabbles with new instructions. I guess I should have expected this muddle, since nearly all your theories lead to blatant contradictions.


SPECIATION & GOD'S CONTROL

DAVID: Speciation occurs in general climate conditions, not in a box contained to a little area of the Earth. You totally muddling up the concepts of local weather and general climate.

dhw:I’m just a little surprised. Have you never heard of endemism? […] Do you really believe that every new species evolved simultaneously all over the world?

DAVID: Of course not.

So why are you claiming that speciation does not occur locally? Another contradiction.

Biochemical controls

dhw: If God wanted organisms to design their own innovations, he would have given them the power to do so. And if he could do it himself within 30,000 generations, he could have given them the power to do the same.

DAVID: But He didn't based on no evidence of any ability. All we see is epigenetics.

Nobody knows how speciation happens, but autonomous adaptation and variation suggests that there is an autonomous mechanism which enables cells to make changes to themselves. If God could change the genetic code, why do you think it is not possible for him also to have endowed cells with the autonomous ability to do the same?

Brain evolution

QUOTE: “The brain is rewiring itself on the fly in response to experience,” Mattick explains.

dhw: I would suggest that this process mirrors the whole history of evolution: the cell communities of which all organisms are made change IN RESPONSE to experiences (new conditions), not IN ANTICIPATION of them.

DAVID: The plasticity of the brain is a built-in ability given 210,000 years ago in anticipation of future use. Undeniable.

I would suggest that the plasticity of the brain goes back long, long before then. You have agreed that pre-sapiens brains would have complexified before they expanded. We have discussed your “anticipation” theory ad nauseam. I propose that not only the brain but every change in every organ and organism through evolution has been a RESPONSE to new conditions, concepts, requirements etc. Once the change is successful, of course it is used in the future. To return to our favourite example, I propose that instead of your God operating overnight on prewhales to change their legs into flippers and then sending them into the water, they would have entered the water with their legs intact, and only as they took to life in the water did their legs change into flippers. Evolution IN RESPONSE to conditions, not in ANTICIPATION of them. But of course they and their future descendants used the flippers!

Immortal jellyfish

QUOTE: "Genes related to pluripotency, or a cell’s ability to grow into a variety of fully developed forms, did the opposite.[…]

DAVID: Just a fascinating study. No one is meant to live forever, but these guys have a trick. dhw will ask why these exist. They fit into their ecosystem.

I have dealt elsewhere with your final comment, but what really fascinates me is “genes related to pluripotency”. This to me constitutes the fundamental mechanism of evolution: cells which can “grow into a variety of fully developed forms”. The potential is almost limitless, and the interplay between endlessly versatile cells and the environment (changing conditions) is what has given rise to the vast variety of life forms that have been and gone, or that still exist. Origin? Unknown, but origin is another question. See below:

Origin of life

DAVID: This is the usual fairy tale of chance development shown by intelligent design in the lab.

Agreed! You have echoed one of two comments at the end of the “brief guide”!


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