Cell response to electric field (Introduction)

by David Turell , Thursday, April 18, 2013, 20:16 (4036 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: I don't think that whales were pre-planned. The bush of life invented them. It is the inventiveness of DNA you keep ignoring. 
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> dhw:The bush could not invent anything. The bush is the result of all the inventions. And if whales were not preprogrammed by your God, but DNA invented them, it is the "intelligence" of DNA you keep ignoring.-I misspoke: the bush is the result of DNA inventiveness. I meant the 'bushing process'. But you are the one who is ignoring the correct interpretation of the intelligence of DNA. DNA operates from a very intelligent coded information it contains. DNA is just a giant molecule. It cannot think or plan, only react. 
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> dhw: Let us review the situation. According to you, the cell/genome/DNA is an automaton: it has no consciousness/thought/intelligence of its own but can only react to its environment. The first forms of life .....['and] Other forms of life, were byproducts which the genome invented without preprogramming, and without having a clue what it was doing.-Generally, yes, but I suspect there is an underlying layer of coding that directed evolution to human development. There is too much sense of teleology in this regard for me to ignore.
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> dhw: Questions:
> 1) If the genome invented whales without being preprogrammed, how do you know it didn't also invent bonobos without being preprogrammed? -It did.DNA is programmed only to respond to changes. -> dhw:2) If God's preprogramming of bonobos depended on unpredictable changes in the environment, is it not true to say that the evolution of the human bush depended on chance?-Possibly, but note my comment above. The whole thing smells of teleology.-
> 3) Bearing in mind that Darwin's theory allows for your God creating the first forms of life and the mechanisms for evolution, and if you believe that unpreprogrammed, unconscious, unintelligent DNA could invent all the complex innovations necessary to create flycatchers, whales and brontosauruses, why can't you believe that random mutations could do the same thing? -Because most mutations are not beneficial, and the time line is too short to allow for Darwin's gradualism. Note punctuated equilibrium, and all species arrive de novo in the fossil record. Epigenetics is a part of the genome which came at the origin of life.-> dhw: 4) If an unpreprogrammed organism perceives, responds, solves problems, calculates what it is capable of doing in a given environment, and then invents something totally new and functional, what else would it need for you to acknowledge its "intelligence"?-You refuse to acknowledge my scenario. The DNA is an automaton using the information it is given.-
> 5) dhw: how do you know that the consciousness of the human 'soul' exists but the consciousness of the genome does not?-I have faith the human soul exists, but consciousness is related only to nervous tissue. However, since the quantum network pervades the universe, it may have some effect upon individual molecules in a way that science has not yet descovered.
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> DAVID: I only work with what I see and try to apply some underlying structure to it.
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> dhw: Why leap so decisively into such quicksands of illogic when you can sit safely on the fence with me and contemplate other options with calm and rational detachment?-Because I can only see one side of your picket fence as rational. I only see your head in the sand.