Cell response to electric field (Introduction)

by dhw, Tuesday, April 23, 2013, 12:05 (4032 days ago) @ David Turell

David believes that the human branch of the evolutionary bush was planned and preprogrammed from the beginning, whereas all other species are the result of "a directed evolution that responds to environmental changes with a multitude of attempts to advance the complexity of life." He has mentioned whales as an example of such a "byproduct". I keep pointing out that every innovation that has led from bacteria to humans (eyes, lungs, livers, brains) must therefore have been triggered by random environmental changes, in which case the human branch depended on chance. The only alternative would be that all eyes, lungs, livers, brains depended on environmental change, except for the eyes, lungs, livers, brains of humans and their ancestors, which were planned and preprogrammed from the beginning, independently of environmental change! David has now leapt from the beginning to the end of the chainAVID: I specifically reject the idea that climate change took the hominins out of trees. The assumption that the appearance of savannah brought them out of trees has been recently questioned.
 
This does not invalidate the argument concerning the chain from bacteria to hominins. If you choose to believe that God preprogrammed the first forms of life to pass on instructions through zillions of organisms that in, say, 3 billion years a set of primates were to descend from the trees regardless of the environment, that is up to you.
 
DAVID: And part of my theory is the pattern of behavior of the primates they left behind, who remained in the trees to this day!-You seem to assume that any environmental change is global. As I pointed out on 21 April, "maybe [leaving the trees] WAS necessary under certain local conditions." Maybe the primates in Area A had to leave the trees, while primates in Areas B, C and D were able to stay as they were. The fact that someone has questioned the savannah theory doesn't mean we are now obliged to reject the possibility of a local climate change.-DAVID: And as for punctuated equilibrium, it is simply a fact. -I also accept it. My point was that you were "stuck with" the rapidity of hominin skeletal changes and brain development, but these are explained by p.e. ... innovations have to work rapidly, and this is not proof that God preprogrammed them.-DAVID: If the genome is completely automatic it does not have intelligence in its own right.
dhw: Obviously. We are discussing whether it [the genome] IS completely automatic.
DAVID: Agreed and it is:
See this video just entered into the forum...-I still can't get onto the video, though my daughter did straight away on her computer. She will bring it here over the weekend. In the meantime, the fact that a video agrees with your opinion does not mean that your opinion has been proved correct (see below).-dhw: When you say repeatedly that the cell IS an automaton, what you really mean is that you believe it is an automaton,..... -DAVID: Not true! The science of evolution expressly shows that the genome is an automaton. The atheists depend on this viewpoint. Otherwise they have to identify the source of the intelligent information in the code. The code simply invented itself by chance(!), no source (God) of intelligent information required.-Neither the theist nor the atheist hypothesis need depend on the genome being an automaton. The theist can argue that his God invented a mechanism that could act intelligently and independently (as we humans think we do). The atheist can argue that this same mechanism was assembled through cooperation between materials after non-conscious energy had become aware of itself through changes in the materials it had produced and in which it was embedded.-You often tell us to think "out of the box", and yet when you peep out of this particular box, you seem so horrified that you immediately slam the lid shut. Compare your scream of "Not true!" with your statement on 19 April at 18.05: "If we live long enough...my viewpoint will be verified. Barbara M. is right to ask for that study of cellular self-knowledge. My prediction is that there will be no self-knowledge." It would appear that in the last three days, the science of evolution has proved once and for all that your "viewpoint" is correct and your "prediction" has come true. I predict a Nobel Prize for whoever spent last weekend coming up with the goods on your behalf. And perhaps if we live long enough, we shall see another Nobel Prize awarded for someone's discovery that the cell DOES have knowledge of itself. N.B. I said "perhaps". In this field, nothing is certain, no matter what you theists and atheists agree or disagree on.-There is more food for thought in my response to your enlightening entry under "Automatic cell activity".