Miscellaneous (General)

by dhw, Monday, November 18, 2024, 11:04 (3 days ago) @ David Turell

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

dhw: [...] 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: Your question is the answer! The first cells came with survival answers. We wouldn't be here if they didn't.

More obfuscation. Did God provide the first cells with every single answer to every single question, or did he provide cells with the ability to work answers out for themselves?

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?

dhw: 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.

DAVID: All they do is humanize Him.

Silly “humanization” mantra repeatedly demolished by yourself. See the “evolution” thread.

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: ...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?

DAVID: He used them to create us and our food. 4.5 bya is not far from 3.8 bya when first life appeared.

Not just “used” them. According to you he created them. Since you seem to know when, why did he leave them floating around for about 1000,000,000 years, and then use them to create and cull all kinds of life forms, if all he wanted to do was create us and our food?

Introducing the brain: consciousness as ephaptic fields

DAVID: 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.
(You have answered my question about animals and their immortal souls, so we needn’t discuss it any further.)

DAVID: Consciousness as a free floating entity could settle into an ephaptic field.

I’ve reread the article because I’ve always been intrigued by the fact that thanks to technology we can witness events that took place millions of years ago. Maybe the brain too can somehow produce “fields” that are preserved independently of their material source. NDEs and stories of ghosts are obvious examples.The article itself, however, only seems to be concerned with the speed of cognitive thought:

QUOTES: traditional synaptic firing speeds could not explain the speed of cognitive functions he had observed over the years in rabbits and cats.

"Instead the recent spate of ephaptic effects findings suggest a solid mechanism to explain these speeds. Our recent theoretical paper, building on these findings, suggested that ephaptic field effects may in fact be the primary mechanism for consciousness and cognition, rather than neural firing.”

Even if it is the mechanism, that doesn’t suggest "free floating" dualistic immortality.

Our whole body has memory

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

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.

dhw: 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.

DAVID: New minor adaptations may be fully molecular alterations in reactions.

I’m not talking about major v minor adaptations. The question is whether cells do or do not perform all the above actions, which require thought.

ANT FOOD FORAGING

QUOTE: Researchers have discovered that in a foraging ant's search for food, it will leave pheromone trails connecting its colony to multiple food sources when they're available...

There is nothing new in this research! Even I knew about pheromone trails years and years ago.