Biological complexity:how toxoplasmosis parasitizes (Introduction)

by David Turell , Saturday, December 03, 2016, 14:59 (2694 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: but here you are conflating the issue of cellular intelligence with the issue of whether cells are intelligent ENOUGH to create the complexities of evolution, as below:

DAVID: I present complexity, as you state, to raise this issue: how much complexity will it take for you to recognize that intense mental planning is required to produce that complexity. Primarily there are only two choices, chance development or design of the complexity.

dhw: Again you are fudging the issue. WHICH complexity – the complexity of the cell, or the complexities of evolutionary innovations? Your post dealt with the cell, and I agree: chance v design. Complexities of evolutionary innovations leading to speciation: I offer cellular intelligence (perhaps God-given) v divine preprogramming and/or dabbling. A totally different issue.

No fudging. The complexities of bacteria are not the same as animals with nucleated cells. Bacteria are very complex in that they must be entirely intact to function, so that we cannot imagine a 'first' cell only partially intact. This is the origins of life aspect of evolution you keep dodging as part of the continuum of living evolution. I presented the complexities of the nuclear pores to show that this one innovation alone requires exquisite planning for the pore to function properly, which means the necessary future functions had to be understood in advance to develop the design. You use demonstrated intelligent activity of bacteria to justify your hypothesis that a committee of cells can understand this project and work it out. And yet the possibility of bacterial intelligence is a 50/50 proposition: either they can act intelligently or they follow intelligent instructions they contain, and no one on Earth can tell the difference, me or especially Shapiro. Did you really look at the diagrams of the pores? I come from a view of incredulity. Aren't you incredulous?

DAVID: Your 'third way' with cellular intelligence assumes cells themselves can work out the exquisite complexity. By offering the 'God-given intelligence' you are not taking a 'third way', you are just coming back to God and joining me.

dhw: I am not offering a third way. I am disputing your account of how evolution works (= God planned absolutely everything in order to produce humans) in favour of God (theistic version) planning a free-for-all through autonomous cellular intelligence, with possible dabbling.

Come on, having God give them intelligence and possible dabbling, is bringing God back into the picture. There is only chance or design! You can't escape it!

DAVID: I've agreed God may have provided them with an inventive mechanism.

dhw: There is no agreement between us on this, because you insist that the mechanism for invention is always guided by God. My hypothesis depends on it being autonomous. An inventor is not someone who obeys instructions.

Cells with God's inventiveness on board is still design: God's activity. How agnostic are you, really? Is chance out the window?