More miscellany Part Two (Evolution)

by David Turell , Friday, August 16, 2024, 02:03 (97 days ago) @ dhw

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.

dhw: 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.

More wishful thinking.

Symbiotic controls (back to “theodicy”)

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.

dhw: 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!

Yes, it does. Its cause is that it is a side-effect of all the good.

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.

dhw: Yet another example of your perfect God’s imperfections.

Don't you remember, God's systems are based on free-floating molecules? It makes life exist! It is the molecules free-to-make-mistakes that creates the bad. God DIDN'T do it. Nor is there any way He could completely stop them. He did put in editing systems, but they never could be perfect because of the freedom problem of molecules in those systems.