Intelligent design (Introduction)

by Abel , Friday, October 28, 2011, 23:22 (4775 days ago) @ dhw

Thank you for the pointed questions dhw, they are exactly what this theory needs if it is ever to be accepted by anyone. I will endeavor to answer them well.

You asked about what selective pressures would exist in such a system and why would living organisms within it become more complex.

In a high-entropy system such as ours there is a metabolic advantage to simplicity that off-sets any advantage provided by complexity. Organisms in our environment need to maximize their efficiency to compete effectively, especially when food is scarce. This relationship is primal. The catabolic power that an organism produces must equal or exceed the metabolic power that it consumes (its' metabolic load) or it will die by a process of energetic depletion. To avoid this, cells have mechanisms such as hypoxia-inducible factors (HIFs) that reduce their metabolic load during energy shortages, specifically to avoid this fate. The cell also has anabolic demands (a need for parts). The catabolic and anabolic needs of a cell must be met at all times. Replication/reproduction greatly increases those needs, a hostile environment will increase them as well.

Though many scientists know what I have told you, few actually truly understand it. If they did, cancer and many other diseases could be curedby a means that they can never defeat: the Laws of Nature. Fortunately for all of us, science is slowly coming to that understanding. I will provide a couple of links here if you wish to read about this further, of course I will be happy to answer any questions you have concerning this topic.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/66520083/Targeting-Cancer-Metabolism-a-Therapeutic-Window-Opens

http://www.thedcasite.com/Dr_Young_Ko/YHK_3BrPA_HCC_BBRC_plus_Suppor_Nov_05_2004.pdf

I'm digressing here, so I will get back on track. This illustration shows how in times of environmental stress, the metabolic mopeds of this world gain a selective advantage over its' metabolic tanks. So though you might think it would be cool to be able to survive on nectar like a hummingbird that delusion would quickly vanish when you had to eat like one.

Now lets talk about why life in a low-entropy environment would inevitably become more complex.

The first and primary drive for this change are those monkeys furiously pounding away at their typewriters. After another age, one of them wrote the second chapter of life, which was followed by the third, then the forth, etc. In this low-entropy environment the advantages conferred by complexity far outweighed its' disadvantages so each of these chapters could be incorporated with little downside to their possession.

In an environment where the building blocks of life tended to associate into pools, there would be a strong environmental stressor for motility. That motility required a cellular "intelligence" to actively direct that motion. We see this "intelligence" in motile cells that can "see" and hunt prey (a protozoa or killer T-cell e.g.) and move by the directed motion of their cell walls, cilia or filaments.

It was the evolution of predators that created the intense selective pressure for greater intelligence. Not only did the predators have to become smarter to catch their prey, their prey had to become smarter to avoid their predators. The need for intelligence to survive in temporally saturated matter is much greater than ours. To understand why, you must understand the properties of temporally saturated (dark) matter even further.

Eating something good on Earth is easy, you pick it up and eat it. All your temporal branes match exactly all the time so you can digest it easily. In dark matter, temporal brane angles are variable. You can only "touch" or "eat" something if your brane angles match. For non-intelligent life (the first organism) these "alignments" happened by chance, but with intelligence came the ability to "twist" the organism's own temporal brane angles to match that of its' food, greatly increasing its' ability harness materials and energy. When one organism began to feed upon another, this created an intelligence arms race. Not only could a predator use its' growing intelligence to better "catch" prey by rapidly shifting its' temporal branes to match those of its' food, but its' prey could escape being eaten by twisting its' own branes so they didn't match and running away straight through the stomach wall of whatever ate it. On this dark matter planet stupidity was rapidly weeded out by evolution. The process was accelerated as one predator type began to feed on another. In dark matter, the fittest are defined by their greater intelligence.

You posed a number of good questions, and answering them will take time. Time that I don't have today. I will return to this topic when I am able.