Innovation (Introduction)

by David Turell , Saturday, April 27, 2013, 16:04 (4027 days ago) @ dhw

Before answering your comments, please note that a prominent editorial in Nature has raised the issue that evolutionists do not understand molecular evolution:-On the 60th anniversary of the double helix, we should admit that we don't fully understand how evolution works at the molecular level, suggests Philip Ball.-http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v496/n7446/full/496419a.html-
"Philip Ball's opinion piece in this week's Nature, the most popular science magazine in the world, is news not because he stated that we don't fully understand how evolution works at the molecular level, but because he urged his fellow evolutionists to admit it. On this 60th anniversary of the discovery of the DNA double helix, Ball reviews a few of the recent findings that have rebuked the evolution narrative that random mutations created the biological world......For instance, evolutionists have had to resort to the explanation that rather than mutations tweaking the DNA's protein-coding genes to create or improve protein functions, those mutations must have sometimes tweaked regulatory networks that control the expression of said genes. What Ball doesn't mention is that this new epicycle relies on the prior existence of those regulatory networks and the protein-coding genes they control.(my bold)
 
"In other words, we now must believe that evolution first constructed the incredible genes and regulatory networks ....which then enabled evolution to proceed."-http://darwins-god.blogspot.com/2013/04/evolutionist-lets-admit-it-we-dont.html-
> dhw: My question, as ever, concerns how these organs were first formed ... i.e. INNOVATION. Cells combined in a new, meaningful, functional and INVENTIVE way, but we don't know how. Your own argument has been that they were preprogrammed to react automatically to environmental change, but unless your God kept intervening or they were preprogrammed right from the start to produce functioning organs that had never existed before, I'm arguing that there has to be an inventive intelligence at work within them.-Your comment is exactly on point: preprogramming, intervention or a source of intelligence within the cell. Obvious. Since we weren't there when the innovations happened, and cannot relive that history, reconstructing history is very chancy. I can make guesses as to how much preprogramming and intervention occurred, but I admit they are only guesses. What I know quite clearly is that there is intelligence in the cells in the form of an amazing code, its many layers, and the complex instructions within those layers to create automatic absolute control of the production processes of life and the responses to adversity when it appears.-As Hunter notes, my bolding, which came first (chicken/egg) simple DNA or complex DNA, without which (the latter) the complexity of life doesn't innovate or even exist.
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> The question is how and why genes change themselves, without scientists (your God) intervening and without being preprogrammed, to produce something that never existed before. "Epigenetically by gene expression modification" doesn't help me to understand how cells can invent the liver.-Exactly!!! No one knows how it works, and Darwin, poor fellow, lacking the knowledge of 150 years of current research, cannot help us. Not his fault. Cells were blobs of 'protoplasm' in his time, not the massively complex factories we now know. We are at the molecular level of nano-machines working away as if they (the molecules) had brains. 
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>DAvid: [i Megason and colleagues propose that instead of the location telling a cell what identity to adopt, the cell's identity is fixed first and then determines the location."[/i]
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> dhw:So the cells decide their identity (it is not decided for them), and they then determine where to go (they are not instructed). -You misinterpret. They are automatically instructed once their identity is established.
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> dhw: The fact that the mechanism is not (yet) clear is hardly a ringing endorsement of automatism.
 
> ""Once they have these differential affinities, they could self-assemble," said Megason.
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> Megason is delving deeper into the molecular biology to determine whether adhesion is directing self-assembly."
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> The expression used was: the cells "turn on different adhesion molecules", which suggests that it's the cells that do the directing. This is a clear example of cells cooperating to maintain an existing form.-The cells are programmed to cooperate.
 
> dhw: However, neither of your examples explains how a set of cells can spontaneously combine to form something new if there are no scientists (gods) intervening (as with the mouse brain), and if there is no established pattern to conform to. -Exactly. You clearly see the problem. And you don't accept chance. So you would like to invent a self-indulgent cell, to avoid design.