Cell response to electric field (Introduction)

by David Turell , Monday, April 08, 2013, 15:39 (4046 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: You are making the same sort of claim: the genome looks as if it thinks, but it doesn't. And you offer no more support for your claim than Dawkins offers for his. So here's the converse: if evolution looks designed, maybe it is; and if the genome looks as if it thinks, maybe it does. You have admitted that we don't know how the mechanism for innovation works. We have agreed to exclude chance. We are left with God creating or preprogramming every innovation separately, or a mechanism (which God may or may not have invented) that does its own inventing. Neither of us knows the answer, so why not keep an open mind?-Up to this point I will accept your statements, with the exeception that the genome does not really think. It is a densely packed brilliant code with many layers of activity. The cell is able to tap into that code automatically, but the code is intellectually created by God. That is the level where the thinking was.- 
> dhw: why can't you even countenance the possibility that the genome may be governed by its own "intelligence"? Repeating the claim that the genome is an automaton is no more scientific than Dawkins repeating the claim that life and the universe appeared to have been designed but aren't. You are both simply reiterating your unscientific beliefs.-My beliefs are entirely scientific. I know organic chemistry and I know that molecules are automatons responding to external electro-chemical signals of various types. The protein molecules are built with folding to have trigger points. This comparison with Dawkins is entirely off base. Dawkins is discussing a macro view of life's evolution. I am working at the molecular level which is the essence of life. At this micro level the processes are automatic. And this is why the appearance of consciousness is so confusing. How do automatic neuronal processes create thought? We don't know and that is not a cop out. We simply do not know.-I also know that the cell is govened by an intelligence given to it in the code of the genome. The code has built in responses to environmental threats or alterations. Unless your definition of 'cell intelligence' recognizes the genome's gift and recognizes the automaticity of the cell responses, your statement implies that the cell can think and analyze at a conscious level. The kidney can analyze your blood stream and adjust salt levels, but it does not do it by thought processes. It is all automatic chemistry, with levels set by the genome! -And even this mundane point has an implied proof of evolution. Life began in the salty oceans. Oceans are 0.9% salty. So is your blood, for no better reason than that! On this point Dawkins and I are in full agreement! Cells did not try to be inventive and use a different salt level in blood, because there was nothing to be gained. There was no automatic response because life works well at that salt level. Evolution is driven to complexify but knows when 'good enough' is OK. All due to the DNA codes, actively given by the first cause, God.
Passive reactivity from that point on.-Moral: DNA actively given and driving, driven cells automatically responding. You are misinterpreting the driving source of activity.