More "miscellany" PARTS ONE & TWO (General)

by dhw, Thursday, October 13, 2022, 10:56 (533 days ago) @ David Turell

SURVIVAL STRATEGIES

DAVID: More just-so story. A decision to fly thousands of miles over ocean requires conceptual planning. You can't belittle it.

dhw: You don’t even read what I write. My migration “story” is that there was no decision to fly thousands of miles. The first migrants would have decided to avoid freezing to death by searching for warmer climes….

DAVID: And those climes are at a major distance!!

Explained in the continuation of my post, and now bolded since you ignored it.

dhw: Winter doesn’t turn into summer just around the corner! Clearly their search did take them thousands of miles, and searches by some birds would have ended in failure. But the birds that succeeded in finding a safe haven would later have returned to their first home, and from then on, they and their descendants would have stuck to their successful route. Just a theory,[/i]

DAVID: So the first brave survivors, now very far away, remember exactly how to get home? Tiny birdbrains with huge mental concepts.

The tiny birdbrains still know how to get there and back. They know how to navigate. Which of the two theories below do you believe in?

dhw: […] I don’t know why you consider it more “just-so” than your God programming the first cells, 3.8 billion years ago, to pass on a programme for bird evolution plus a programme for their air travel to warmer climes once he’d designed winter and summer. Same “just-so” if you have him popping in on a cold winter’s day to guide the first flock across the ocean because otherwise he could not have designed sapiens and our food.

DAVID: Survival of ecosystems is important, and birds must fit in.

Survival of ecosystems is /were essential to all the life forms that live(d) in them. Do you think we humans would die out if certain birds hadn’t learned to migrate and navigate?

Stroke recovery in infants

DAVID: The brain is built to help us and has the major ability to reorganize itself to satisfy all of our mental needs.

dhw: You have offered us articles before about people with half a brain, and all this research seems to me to confirm your final point: the cell communities of which the brain is composed have the major ability to reorganize themselves. I wouldn’t go so far as to say they “satisfy all our mental needs”, but I would certainly emphasize the autonomy of the cells’ ability to reorganize themselves, and that requires intelligence. A theist can of course propose that God was the inventor of the intelligent cell.

DAVID: Yes, He was.

dhw: I’m delighted that you have now accepted the concept of the autonomously intelligent cell.

DAVID: I never accept an independently autonomous interpretation of cells.

You have just accepted that he was the inventor of the intelligent cell. Do you think your God has to pop in to do a dabble whenever an infant has a stroke? Or preprogrammed the first cells to pass on instructions? Besides, you have always maintained that we humans have free will, which would not be possible if our brain cells were all preprogrammed.

First multicellularity

QUOTE: “the two distinct phases of HS-3's life cycle are reversible, and may have arisen due to the changing conditions inside the cave.”

DAVID: this is similar to other findings as in amoeba colonies. Still not an answer to the origin of multicellularity.

But the above quote gives us a good lead: all multicellular life forms “may have arisen due to the changing conditions” in all regions over thousands of millions of years, with cells/cell communities always adapting and innovating in order to improve their chances of survival. And – to anticipate your response! – yes, this ability may have been given to them by your God.


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