More Denton: Reply to Tony (Introduction)

by dhw, Tuesday, July 28, 2015, 22:59 (3196 days ago) @ David Turell

TONY: True. New inventions require new information, and intelligence. Given that humans cannot even design a single cell, you are implying that a single cell, or cell community, is vastly superior in terms of knowledge and ability than humans. While I conceded this may be possible, I consider it highly unlikely.-DAVID: This is simple logic that I cannot get across to dhw. A new species requires not just a re-working of information in DNA, it requires planning and development of new control DNA information to manage the new complexities of the new species. We don't know how speciation works, but what I have described is an absolute requirement for speciation to occur. 'Cell communities' do not have the capacity nor the communication skills to accomplish this in any theoretical manner.
-Believe me, I understand how enormously complex the changes have to be, but unlike you I can't announce what cells can and can't do in conditions we don't know about. (See also my response to Tony.) Speciation happened, and ALL the hypotheses entail stretching credulity far beyond what we know (though one of them must be close to the truth). Your own set of programmes for every single innovation and natural wonder, passed down through thousands of millions of years and organisms, with each individual programme switching itself on automatically in the appropriate organism, frankly beggars belief, especially since it must also entail preprogramming the environment or allowing for every possible environmental change. (Alternatively, God personally intervening to show the weaverbird how to build its nest, etc.) But you prefer to dodge the colossal implications with your weasel word “guidance”. -DAVID: There is also a time problem. In advanced species with sexual reproduction, it requires several generations to fix a change in the genome, with the result that species change takes a long time period, especially in humans with a 18-20 years generation span. Compare that to the abrupt appearance of the Cambrian animals. Like going from 0 to 60 in 3.5 seconds.-The Cambrian lasted 5-10 million years, which allows for quite a few generations (I calculated the number in an earlier post.) We must assume that the necessary changes did take place in the allotted time. These innovations don't happen now, so back we go to the different hypotheses, not one of which fits in with anything we know or perhaps even can know. But mine does have a simple logic, if only I could get it across to you...