Biological complexity: how we smell odors (Introduction)

by dhw, Thursday, June 02, 2016, 12:40 (2884 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: Of course, you are perfectly entitled to your opinion, and as nobody knows the truth, you may be right, but this forum is a quest for possible truths (we are never going to establish absolute, objective truths), so I hope you will forgive me if I continue to probe.
DAVID: I want you to probe. It helps clarify my thoughts. - Thank you. The discussions and articles on the latest research are immensely helpful to me too. - dhw: All communication (other than what we term “psychic”) depends on molecular reactions of one sort or another. The mystery is not the technique of communicating but the source of the messages to be communicated.
DAVID: In cells it is the molecular reactions that act purposively and are programmed that way. The source is not chance but design. - It is clear that after your brief flirtation with a “free” complexity mechanism you are now reverting to preprogramming and dabbling. But we should be careful to distinguish between stages. I am also claiming that the source of the messages is “design” in the sense that cellular intelligence (possibly designed by your God) processes and communicates the information and takes the decisions based on that information. Chance is not an option. - dhw: If the cells don't do their own “planning”, either your God preprogrammed all the messages when life began, or he personally provided and provides them ad hoc (dabbled/dabbles) when each new situation arises. This seems to me somewhat less likely than cells doing their own processing and taking their own decisions on what to communicate to one another. It is perfectly possible that what looks like intelligence actually is intelligence, and of course they may have acquired their intelligence “thru God's agency”.
DAVID: Nice balancing act on your fence. - Not quite. “Somewhat less likely” is a gently understated way of tilting the balance! Your “free complexity mechanism” which allows the bush to “spread as it wishes”, while God “only steps in to dabble” seems to me vastly more likely than your dramatic reversion to your God putting in “programs to organize what complexifications are created”. - dhw: … an atheist could say that an infinite and eternal process of self-transforming energy and matter would eventually and inevitably produce the same complexity of our reality.
DAVID: The atheist has to propose that energy can be self-transforming, something no one has ever observed. - But that is YOUR proposal: that “pure energy” transformed itself into a universe! My atheistic proposal is based on the fact that energy and matter are forever transforming themselves, and we see it all the time in the physical world around us and even within us!