bat wings and cellular intelligence (Introduction)

by dhw, Tuesday, May 13, 2025, 11:26 (9 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Your just-so explanation has a problem in the fossil record where there are none.

dhw: The lack of transitional fossils is hardly surprising, given the fact that tens if not hundreds of millions of years have passed, and each new fossil is regarded as a kind of miracle.

DAVID: That we have so many fossils is the real miracle.
And
DAVID: The whale series proves my point: a rather full story; but none for bats.

It proves MY point. Each discovery is a miracle in itself, and the whale series is EXCEPTIONALLY miraculous. It clearly demonstrates how species can pass through different developmental stages over millions of years, and so it’s not unreasonable to assume that there are countless species, variations and intermediate stages of which there are no miraculous fossils to be found.

DAVID: Flying squirrels fit your story, but they never grew wings for their jumps. The Darwin approach always involves a good imagination.

dhw: Yes, bats are unique. And yes, it is difficult to imagine ANY explanation for all the complexities of life and evolution. This includes the imagining of an eternal, sourceless, omnipotent but inefficient form of consciousness that designed every creature that ever lived – including 99.9 out of 100 which it didn’t actually want to design and therefore had to get rid of.

DAVID: The intricacies of biochemical life require a designing mind as its source.

Or designing minds in the form of intelligent cell communities responding to the demands or opportunities arising from changing conditions. And it would be fair enough for the theist to argue that such designing minds must themselves have been designed. And it would be equally fair for atheists to claim that if designing minds must have been designed, who designed the designing mind you call God? Your answer is “first cause”, which proves absolutely nothing, since “first cause” could also be infinite, eternal matter and energy eventually producing the first life. No more and no less incredible than infinite, eternal, sourceless consciousness producing the first matter and energy.

dhw: There are now over 1400 bat species worldwide. I presume you do not believe your God designed each one individually, and indeed on occasions you have accepted the possibility that he gave cells sufficient autonomous intelligence to make what would have been minor changes in response to different conditions. But still you refuse to consider the POSSIBILITY that their intelligence might extend to a gradual improvement leap by leap that would lead to the finished product we know today.
If you can imagine a small degree of autonomy, I still find it hard to understand why you can’t accept the POSSIBILITY of a large degree.

DAVID: There is no autonomy in organismal cells. They follow directions.

Your usual statement of your beliefs as if they were facts. Once more:
SHAPIRO: Living cells and organisms are cognitive (sentient) entities that act and interact purposefully […] They possess sensory, communication, information-processing and decision making capabilities. […] Cells are built to evolve; they have the ability to alter their hereditary characteristics etc.

There are plenty of experts in the field who agree with him.