Miscellaneous (General)

by dhw, Sunday, November 17, 2024, 11:54 (4 days ago) @ David Turell

Immunity system complexity (C elegans, and also the brain’s fractal organization)

dhw: [...] There are countless threats. Do you believe that 3.8 billion years ago, your God provided the first cells with detailed instructions on how organs/organisms should respond to every one, and the right instructions are “automatically” switched on when the relevant threat materializes? If not, please tell us what part your God has played in designing all the responses (some of them unsuccessful) to all the threats.

DAVID: Threat types are quite limited, for examples: starvation, attacks by predators, hot or cold climate changes. Coded responses are not necessarily endless, but limited as threats are.

Why can’t you give a straight answer to a straight question? Do you believe that 3.8 billion years ago, your God provided the first cells with detailed instructions on how organs/organisms should deal with every threat etc., and if not, please tell us what part he played in designing all the responses to the threats.

A theoretical God

DAVID: Stop blaming God for choosing to evolve us.

dhw: I am not blaming God for any such thing! I am blaming you for coming up with a theory that you agree makes no sense. […]

DAVID: You won't change my memory. I can't go back to many years ago like 2009. But you said if God can directly create as in the Cambrian why did He evolve us?

Correct. It’s not a statement blaming God, but was and is a crucial question which you can’t answer. I have suggested that your illogical theory might be wrong. Maybe we weren’t his only purpose, or he couldn’t create directly, or he was experimenting etc. My alternative reasons for your God’s use of evolution all counter YOUR blaming him for being messy and inefficient.

Theoretical origin of life: Space is filled with organics

DAVID: You can't just let proteins fall together and get life! It takes careful design.

dhw: So why did your careful, omnipotent, omniscient designer create billions of organic molecules to float around for billions of years if all he wanted to do was stick some together in order to create us and our food? Back to square one.

DAVID: How do you know if the molecules did not appear until 4.5 bya when the Earth formed? You infer right from the Big Bang.

I have no idea when they first appeared. But if you insist, why did your all-knowing, all-powerful God create billions of organic molecules 4.5 billion years ago to float around for billions of years, if all he wanted to do was create us and our food?

Introducing the brain: consciousness as ephaptic fields

QUOTE: "This single paper could take the field of ephaptic field science from the fringes of neuroscience to the forefront. Its findings regarding the speed and pervasiveness of ephaptic field effects may presage a fundamentally new understanding of how cognition and consciousness work." (David's bold)

DAVID: the bold just above expresses my feelings. It is an impressive suggestion. I must admit it comfortably fits my underlying dualism, as a field theory not fully tied to serial synaptic connections but fitting into fields.

dhw: I don’t understand how a process that depends in the first instance on neurons can fit your dualism. We should also note that these experiments were carried out on mice – and earlier on rabbits and cats. Do you regard this as evidence that mice, rabbits and cats have souls that will live on after they die?

DAVID: The Jewish religion thinks so: Nefesh and Neshama, souls for both.

dhw: I didn’t ask about the Jewish religion. Do YOU think mice, rabbits and cats have immortal souls?

DAVID: I am not an expert in souls. I'll accept the Jewish view.

Thank you for answering my question. Of course, your faith still doesn’t explain how a process that originates in neurons “fits” your dualism.

Our whole body has memory

QUOTES: "The ability to learn from spaced repetition isn't unique to brain cells, but, in fact, might be a fundamental property of all cells,"

“For example, consider what our pancreas remembers about the pattern of our past meals to maintain healthy levels of blood glucose or consider what a cancer cell remembers about the pattern of chemotherapy."

“The cell responses also depended on the time between pulses. These factors varied how strongly the memory-forming molecules were activated, and for how long – exactly what happens with our neurons. (David’s bold)

DAVID: What the non-biochemist must remember is everything happens is at a molecular reaction level. This is the automaticity I tout. Molecules do not think.

But the ability to learn “might be a fundamental property of all cells”. Molecules may provide information and may be activated, but something in the cell also has to process the information, commit it to memory, call upon the memory, and decide how to respond to the new information. This requires thought of some kind (not to be confused with human levels of thinking.) According to you, cells do not think. Many scientists disagree with you.