More miscellany Parts One & Two (Evolution)

by dhw, Friday, October 04, 2024, 12:19 (14 days ago) @ David Turell

DNA hunts pathogens

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.

DAVID: 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.

If cells follow God’s instructions but fail, then clearly God and his instructions are at fault. But if God gave freedom of action to all cells and bugs (instead of giving them instructions), then the cells and bugs are responsible for success or failure. This is what we call a free-for-all. See the “evolution” thread.

Walking fish and The bowerbird concert hall

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?

DAVID: All in preparation for our arrival.

So your omnipotent God could not have designed us if he had not designed the 99.9% of species which he then had to cull because they were irrelevant to us and our contemporaries. It’s hardly surprising that you regard such a God as a messy, imperfect and inefficient designer.

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: 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.

DAVID: Simple: each and every design is a concept.

No problem, then. Our brain designs means of coping with needs, whether present or anticipated because of past experiences. When you say “only a designer fits”, our brain is the designer. (And if God exists, he would have designed the cells that enable our brains to do the designing.)

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."

dhw: 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.)

DAVID: Only if He wished both processes.

Of course. In my view, your God – if he exists – would only design what he wished to design. See the “evolution” thread re your view of your God’s inefficiency and impotence.

Theoretical origin of life

QUOTE: Researchers have discovered inorganic nanostructures surrounding deep-ocean hydrothermal vents that are strikingly similar to molecules that make life as we know it possible.

DAVID: pitiful. Just because it looks like something doesn't mean it applies in the same way!

Life as we know it replicates itself, adapts itself, innovates, and produces millions of different organisms with a vast repertoire of functions. Inorganic nanostructures don’t. My thanks to David for his rapid and comprehensive demolition of the theory.