More "miscellany" PART TWO (General)

by David Turell @, Friday, October 07, 2022, 15:49 (538 days ago) @ dhw

PART TWO

Bird migration

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.

dhw: 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.

The Monarch butterfly survives four metamorphoses in migrating. Doesn't fit your just-so story.


Plant immunity

dhw: 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.[/i]

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.

dhw: 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.

A new solution requires the addition of new information beyond what is known by the existing brains.


Cambrian: early brain

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.

dhw: 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.

The Cambrian gap is only 410,000 years based on latest research. How many lost fossils in that time limit?


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.

dhw: 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!

Yes, design wins.


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