Miscellaneous (General)

by dhw, Tuesday, November 19, 2024, 11:22 (14 days ago) @ David Turell

Immunity system complexity (C elegans, and also “our whole body has memory”)

dhw: 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?

DAVID: They are automatic in solving issues. Cells make only minor alterations in their output.

So did your God provide the first cells with every solution, or did he provide cells with the ability to work out the solutions for themselves?

dhw: (under “our whole body has memory”): 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.)
And:
dhw: 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.

DAVID: It only looks like they do.

If something looks as if it thinks and acts as if it thinks, it is hardly unreasonable to suggest that maybe it thinks.

A theoretical God

DAVID: Stop blaming God for choosing to evolve us.

dhw: […] 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.

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

DAVID: Only silly because you have no answer.

The answer, repeated over and over again, is that you yourself have proposed a list of “humanizations” to explain why your God might have created life and us, and you agree that they are all possible, just as you agree that your God probably/possibly has thought patterns and emotions like ours.

Theoretical origin of life: Space is filled with organics

dhw: 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?

DAVID: God does not tell us why.

And you can’t think of any reason why, but still you insist that you know his purpose was to indulge in his messy, inefficient way of achieving the one and only purpose you allow him to have.

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.

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

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.”

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

DAVID: It only supports the living side of duality.

Nobody knows the truth. If consciousness arises through the actions of neurons, that fact alone could be taken to support materialism.

The missing fossils argument; new very early Ediacaran

QUOTE: "This discovery reconciles a major gap between predictions based on molecular data and the lack of described ecdysozoans prior to the rich Cambrian fossils record and adds to our understanding of the evolution of animal life,"

DAVID: this is the first animal like Ediacaran fossil I've seen. Non e of the others seemed to be mobile. Also it appears de novo as do the Cambrian animals.

I was going to compliment you on your integrity in presenting us with articles that shed doubt on your pet theories, but your comment takes some of the shine off your halo. Nobody knows the true story of life’s evolution, but we are talking about life 600,000,000 years ago. It’s a miracle that ANY fossils have survived, let along been found, but you expect every single stage of every single species to have been recorded for us on our ever changing planet. Otherwise, you will claim that every new discovery must have been created “de novo”. How many remains of current individual species do you think will still be around 600,000,000 years from now?