More "miscellany" PART TWO (General)

by dhw, Friday, October 07, 2022, 09:24 (539 days ago) @ David Turell

PART TWO

Bird migration
QUOTE: “….our study suggests that clock-and-compass migration can provide a basis to reach restricted destinations, illustrating how simple rules can potentially explain complicated patterns observed in nature."

DAVID: this may explain the migratory mechanisms but does not explain the initial steps. A bird or an insect had to suddenly decide to cross an ocean looking for a warmer climate. How does a concept like that appear in a tiny brain? To go wherever and back? God has to be involved.

In some ways, it’s a similar problem to the opossum strategy, though definitely more complex. You seem to think the initial migration was planned in advance. I would suggest that the first migratory birds suddenly found themselves confronted by life-threatening conditions. “We gotta get outa here!” would have been the cry. And they wouldn’t have had a clue where they were going. Winter in one location is liable to be winter in all the nearby locations – frying pan into the fire, or in this case, fridge into freezer. They needed to go one helluva long way to find warmer climes. And no doubt many of them never got to warmer climes. But some did. And they were intelligent enough to remember where they’d come from, and how they got to safety, and – as usual with successful discoveries – the information (following "simple rules", according to the article) was passed on. The origin would not have been a “concept” in a tiny brain, but a desperate and ultimately successful quest for survival.

Plant immunity

DAVID: 3.8 bya the beetle didn't exist. The initial DNA for first life covered the basis for all life. As evolution continued under God's design, DNA was modified. Far-fetched? Only for the doubting.

dhw: Not at all far-fetched. What IS far-fetched is your theory that your God either preprogrammed or dabbled every single DNA modification (not to mention ecosystem, lifestyle, strategy, natural wonder etc.) in the history of life. The cells, you tell us, contain “instructions” for everything, which would include the evolution of beetles as well as defences against them. I suggest it would make more sense if the first cells contained the mechanisms whereby all subsequent cells/cell communities would be able to design their own modifications, ecosystems, lifestyles, strategies, natural wonders etc.

DAVID: And where did all that needed information come from?

dhw: What information are you talking about? An intelligent organism perceives its surroundings (including its fellow organisms) and any threats to its existence, and does what it can to defend itself. Two different types of organism may then combine their intelligence to help one another survive in the process we call symbiosis. Are you asking where the intelligence comes from? How often do I have to repeat that we don’t know, but your God is a possible source.

DAVID: You cannot throw out the requirement for new information to answer the problem.

I’ve asked you: what new information? New problems require new solutions, and these will require intelligent use of whatever "information" exists. Please be more precise.

Cambrian: early brain

QUOTE: "'The most interesting thing about our paper is perhaps what it tells us about the potential for future discoveries," Donoghue said. "Nobody had foreseen that you could preserve brains or nervous tissues in calcium phosphate, and maybe it's just a matter of going back and looking for it in museum drawers.""

DAVID: not closing any gap but confirming a brain in a Cambrian organism. A huge physiological leap from the Edicarans.

dhw: “The potential for future discoveries” applies just as much to the Ediacaran as to the Cambrian! But the preservation of bodies and their tissues is still astonishing in view of the hundreds of millions of years since they died.

DAVID: And the gap is not closed.

And research has not ended. There is a new potential for finding fossils that might close it – or of course, unsurprisingly, there may be no fossils of certain life forms that existed hundreds/thousands of millions of years ago.

Immortal bacteria (spores)

QUOTE: "'The way spores process information is similar to how neurons operate in our brain."

DAVID: did this develop in natural evolution by trial and error? A highly complex mechanism of this sort imitating neurons demands it be designed. It is by definition, irreducibly complex.

This is mind-boggling. Once again, huge thanks for passing it on. I have no answer to the design argument, but I would gently quibble over the imitation, which is surely the other way round. Our brain neurons, like every other type of cell, are descended from bacteria, and I would see this article as evidence for common descent. Maybe in a thousand years’ time, humans will even have perfected their own technique for immortalising themselves. Perish the thought!


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