More miscellany Part Two (Evolution)

by dhw, Thursday, August 15, 2024, 12:19 (32 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: All life forms, animal and plant, are composed of cells. If you agree that they all have some form of intelligence, then you are agreeing that cells have some form of intelligence. That is Shapiro’s theory. But back we go to your schizophrenia: you agree that they have some form of intelligence, but you disagree.

DAVID: The ability to make minor adaptations may imply some minor intelligence, but not the ability to speciate!

It’s excellent news that you now agree that all forms of life, with or without a brain, may have some form of intelligence. There is no doubt that this intelligence is powerful enough to invent means of survival (endosymbiosis being one method demonstrating how intelligences may combine to help one another). Whether that intelligence is powerful enough IN SOME SPECIES to allow for further speciation is a moot point, but that is why I say you are on the verge of accepting Shapiro’s theory. Acknowledgement of intelligence is a very big step in that direction. So too is acknowledgement that there are different degrees of intelligence. Some cell communities cannot go beyond devising means of survival. Comparatively few will be able to innovate. We can see an analogy in humans: not many of us have creative, innovative intelligence. But it only takes a few to create whole new industries/species.

The origin of a nervous system

QUOTES: The study shows that the Shaker family of ion channels were present in microscopic single cell organisms well before the common ancestor of all animals and thus before the origin of the nervous system.

"It seems that animals were able to cobble together a functioning nervous system very early in their evolution simply because most of the necessary proteins were already there.'"

DAVID: This story of evolution of nerves is quite reasonable.

dhw: I think so too. Yet again, it would seem that right from the start, single cells contained the components necessary for evolution. One might therefore rewrite the second quote: it would seem that cells were able to cobble together a functioning nervous system, as well as every other system which eventually evolved into us and our fellow animals.

DAVID: I don't think the article says anything as you wish.

If cell communities (animals) were able to cobble a nervous system together very early in evolution, it suggests that in due course they would have been able to “cobble together” all the innovations that have led to current species.

Symbiotic controls (back to “theodicy”)

dhw: We need the bacteria that help us. Unfortunately, there are also bacteria that make us ill or kill us, but that is another subject.

DAVID: Yes, a side effect of their importance.

dhw: Back to theodicy, and your God who knew he had created bacteria to kill us, but we should ignore them because God is perfect so we should shut our eyes to anything nasty which might be his fault. […]

DAVID: I raised the issue for full discussions we have had.

dhw: You did indeed, and you have repeated your conclusion that the answer to how an all-good God can create bad is to ignore the bad.

DAVID: And you carefully ignore the proportionality argument.

I can hardly be said to ignore proportionality when I point out to you that it is irrelevant if the subject is the cause of evil. Nobody can deny that evil exists!

Natural killer cells

QUOTES: a 2017 study showed that tumors can avoid being killed by triggering the release of transforming growth factor beta (TGFb), a molecule that can turn NK cells into intermediate type 1 innate lymphoid cells (intILC1).

“'Tumors have developed these fantastic environments to survive…”

DAVID: It is amazing to me that such specific proteins create specific functions as the intent of their biochemical reactions. Only design can do this.

dhw: Are you telling us that your God deliberately designed tumors so that they could survive and kill us?

DAVID: Cancers are mistakes in the system. I was presenting immune system ways of fighting them.

dhw: The article you presented introduced the ways in which tumors can resist the immune system’s efforts to kill them. And you emphasized that these must have been designed. I presume you meant by God.

DAVID: Tumors are mistakes in God's systems.

Yet another example of your perfect God’s imperfections.