More miscellany Parts One & Two (Evolution)

by David Turell , Thursday, October 03, 2024, 23:07 (14 days ago) @ dhw

DNA hunts pathogens

dhw: The bugs outsmart your God, but you prefer that explanation to the possibility that your God gave cells the means to design their own defences, and so if they failed, it was their fault and not his.

DAVID: Yes.

dhw: So bugs are smarter than God. No wonder you stand alone in the theological world.

DAVID: Wrong interpretation. The cells failed, not God. They are God's agents, not God Himself.

dhw: You wrote: “In my view the cell’s fault since they follow full instructions.” If they follow your God’s full instructions but fail, then clearly it is the instructions that are at fault! Your response to this was “the bugs are pretty smart”. So the bugs clearly find ways to counter your God’s inadequate instructions. They outsmart your God. Hardly the fault of the cells, who obeyed your incompetent God.

Freedom of action rules the way life must work. Any rules cannot compensate for this freedom. Not God's fault a concept you are blind to.

Walking fish and The bowerbird concert hall

DAVID: Every ecosystem is important on Earth. They all interlock.

dhw: Important for what? Why, according to you, was every species in every ecosystem for the first 3+ billion years of life on Earth “important” for us humans and our food? Why are the walking fish and the concert hall so important for us that your God had to design them?

DAVID: Without every single ecosystem, life on Earth would be much different. Lower levels support upper levels all the way up to top levels.

dhw: Of course if things were different, things would be different. Yes, in all ecosystems, lower levels support upper levels. How does that come to mean that every single species in every single ecosystem for 3.8 billion years was specially designed to support homo sapiens, who didn’t arrive until 300,000 years ago?

All in preparation for our arrival.

Unconscious pattern learning

DAVID: our brain is built to help us, even in advance as I have presented before. This is a conceptual form of planning, not likely to be developed by natural selection in advance of the need. Only a designer fits.

dhw: I’m not sure what you mean by “conceptual planning”. The article simply covers predictions based on experience, a process which we obviously share with our fellow creatures when we all take actions to cope with the expected repetitions of “patterns” (e.g. anticipating the onset of winter).

DAVID: A future design starts as a way to satisfy a need, which requires conceptual planning.

dhw: Where does natural selection come into it? Of course a design that will “satisfy” a present need, or a need anticipated because of past experience, will need to be planned. And it is planned by the brain of the designing organism (“our brain is built to help us”). I don’t know what you mean by “conceptual” planning which “only a designer fits”, by which I assume you mean your God.

Simple: each and every design is a concept.

Endosymbiosis

QUOTE: "For new endosymbioses to arise and stabilize, there needs to be an advantage to living together," says Vorholt. The prerequisite for this is that the prospective resident brings with it properties that favor endosymbiosis. For the host, it is an opportunity to acquire new characteristics in one swoop by incorporating another organism, even if it requires adaptations. "In evolution, endosymbioses have shown how successful they ultimately can become," emphasizes the ETH professor."

This is so blindingly obvious that I’m afraid I burst out laughing. I shall now apply for a grant to enable me to conclude that for any innovation to arise and stabilize, there needs to be an advantage that will help the organism to survive. In evolution, innovations have shown how successful they ultimately can become. All contributions will be welcome.
Incidentally, it was Lynn Margulis who introduced the world to the vital importance of endosymbiosis, and she was a champion of the theory of cellular intelligence.

DAVID: This is the result of organisms adaptability for survival, I think designed by God.

dhw: Yes, organisms have the ability to adapt, and some would say they also have the ability to innovate. Sometimes it’s hard to draw a line between the two abilities, though you like to do so, as you grant organism the former and refuse to accept the possibility of the latter. (If God exists, then of course he would have designed the intelligence enabling both processes.)

Only if He wished both processes.