Cell response to electric field (Introduction)

by dhw, Monday, April 22, 2013, 11:33 (4032 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: The question is WHAT is preprogrammed, and you are trying to combine two very different arguments. One is that humans were preprogrammed from the beginning, and the other is that God invented a mechanism to experiment with "a multitude of attempts to advance the complexity of life". -DAVID: I am stuck with the fact of the rapidity of development of the hominin skeletal changes and then the very rapid development of the brain, especially the frontal lobe, when compared to the prior development of primates preceeding the appearance of hominins.-You are stuck because you want to stick ... namely, to the two contradictory hypotheses quoted above. The anthropocentric one depends a) on random changes in the environment (a strange form of preplanning), and (b) on innovations that humans share with countless species which you say were NOT preprogrammed. And so you have no way of judging whether anything at all was preprogrammed. As for rapidity, ALL innovations must work rapidly if they are to survive. Hence your (in my view justified) emphasis on evolutionary jumps.-DAVID: If the genome is completely automatic it does not have intelligence in its own right.
dhw:Obviously. We are discussing whether it IS completely automatic.
DAVID: Agreed and it is:
See this video just entered into the forum:-http://www.metacafe.com/watch/10335610/the_origin_of_life_requires_intelligence_kirk_du...-I couldn't find out how to play it (I think you have to subscribe). But even if the video shows that life requires intelligence, does it prove your intelligent God did not invent a mechanism that has its OWN inventive intelligence (i.e. is not an automaton)? Unless God himself made the video, I doubt that it will justify your turning your prediction into a fact (see below).-dhw: We know that the body affects the mind, and the mind the body, but that is not what I'm talking about at all. In my hypothesis, I AM arguing that the brain may be a receiver! 
dhw: [...] You are quite right that this panpsychist hypothesis is a cloud of obfuscation.
DAVID: Thank you for accepting the brain as a receiver! And I admit you are a master obfuscator!-You are a master twister! First, the brain as receiver is a hypothesis (not a belief), and second, "may be" is not the same as "is". When you say repeatedly that the cell IS an automaton, what you really mean is that you believe it is an automaton, and when you predict that your belief will be verified, you make it clear that your original statement that the cell IS an automaton was a dreadful obfuscation. It was an attempt to pass off an opinion as a fact. Whereas I always make it abundantly clear that the various hypotheses I am putting forward are ALL suspect and ALL equally incredible. So which of us is the master obfuscator? Gotcher.-Under "Max Planck":
M.P.: I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.
dhw: I agree that consciousness is fundamental. Whether matter derives from consciousness or consciousness derives from matter is one of the great divides between theists and atheists.........The source of consciousness is the key.DAVID: Be careful. Your thoughts are creeping close to mine! Consciousness is not matter,but it must relate to energy in some way. And energy is at the base all there is.-Many of my thoughts do indeed creep close to yours. And many creep close to George's. For example, with regard to consciousness, I have no idea whether it is a form of energy that springs from matter (materialistic atheism), has been deliberately introduced into matter (theism), or has evolved within the matter produced by non-conscious first-cause energy (my panpsychic hypothesis). And so inevitably my thoughts creep in all directions, including yours.