New Miscellany 1 &:2: bio, evolution, intelligence, eco (General)

by dhw, Saturday, May 10, 2025, 10:32 (10 days ago) @ dhw

Biochemical controls: maintaining a memory

DAVID: maintaining a memory involves maintaining a synapse all controlled by specific proteins, no thought involved by the proteins themselves.

dhw: Once they are established, the majority of activities within cellular communities (organisms) will be automatic. It’s only when new conditions require or allow new responses that cellular intelligence comes into play – and part of these responses will clearly be intelligent use of memory. The immune system is an obvious example.

DAVID: Not obvious at all. Immune responses are formulaic. Choose an enemy ligand, add a chemical killer and an antibiotic is produced.

Whereupon your intelligent bacteria often find means of defence, and your unintelligent immune system has to automatically and unthinkingly produce a new antibiotic. We have discussed this many times before. If it’s that simple, how come humans have died in their millions from diseases such as influenza, malaria, AIDS etc, not to mention animal deaths from foot-and-mouth disease and bird flu? Are you blaming God for not providing a programme of antidotes that switch themselves on automatically? Or is it possible that cellular intelligence (including our own) is not powerful enough to devise antidotes? In time, though, immunity cells have built up what I believe you called a ”library” of responses, which cell memory may call on once the cure is established.

Xxxxxxxxx
As the following questions have not been answered, I am proposing DPA (David’s possible answers), each of which would remove at least some of the illogicalities and self-contradictions of the past. But they are MY proposed answers, of course, and not his!!!

Evolution and intelligence
dhw: All life forms must protect themselves against predators and harmful environments and yet you insist that the possum could not possibly have used its intelligence to devise its play-dead strategy, and the weaverbird could not have designed its own nest. If you have now changed your mind, and agree that they can think for themselves, please say so.

DPA: I have changed my mind.

How bacteria control phages
QUOTE: Animal and bacterial cells use nucleotidyltransferase (NTase) enzymes to respond to viral infection and control major forms of immune signalling

DAVID: […] Note these are considered molecular guards against phage infection, no thought involved.

dhw:You have agreed many times over that bacteria have autonomous intelligence. The article and the quote above tell us how both bacterial and animal cells USE molecules to defend themselves. Since when did “using” something mean that the user can’t think?

DPA: You are quite right. I agree once again that animals and bacteria are capable of autonomous thought.

Mind and cosmos
DAVID: The theory is we use His consciousness structure to form our consciousness.

dhw: How about putting it a different way: if he exists, he has provided our cells with consciousness? Doesn’t that make more sense?

DPA: Yes, that makes perfect sense.

Theoretical origin of life
DAVID: For the umpteenth time, God evolved us in a cumbersome way, but that was His choice. It was quite effective. We are here running the world.

dhw: We could also still be here running the world if he had WANTED the species you say he designed and culled: for example through a free-for-all (perhaps with occasional interventions […] Ah, but you “first choose a God I wish to believe in. The rest follows.”” Why do you wish to believe in an inefficient designer?

DPA: I wish to believe that we humans plus food are God’s one and only purpose, and the only way I can fit this in with the history of evolution is to believe that God is an inefficient designer.

eco-disaster
dhw: I’m arguing for a practical phasing out, geared to intensified research on alternatives. Destroying the world’s economic and social systems would be just as ruinous as continuing the practices that are currently destroying the environment.

DAVID: Fools' logic! Fossil fuels will never be stopped in use.

dhw: I really can’t see why it’s fool’s logic to advocate the practical approach I have outlined, and I’m afraid I do not have much faith in your gift of prophecy. “Never”? How about a hundred/thousand/ten thousand years from now (if humans are still around)?

DPA: You are right. I accept your wish for a practical approach, and withdraw my prophecy.

NB These questions all revolve around your fixed beliefs, but none of them challenge your faith in your God’s existence.