Plant automatic response to climate change (Introduction)

by David Turell , Tuesday, January 01, 2019, 18:07 (1947 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: You don't need to pin me down. It is obvious a bacterium must do everything my body does. Eat, defecate, make proteins, etc. and they have special compartments for each job.

dhw: You seemed to think my reason was to point out that bacteria must have the equivalent of a brain. It was to pursue the idea of microcosm reflecting macrocosm, with the embryo reliving evolution from single cell to current multicellular form, which would seem to confirm common descent. Do you think this is true?

DAVID: Frankly, I don't see your macrocosm microcosm example. Perhaps I'm missing some cosmic philosophy. All I see is a single cell has to do what my multicellular body does to maintain the state of living. Which means: single cells are highly complex, and if so how did life start if it was by chance? Obviously, no chance.

dhw: I have long since accepted the logic of the design argument. What struck me about this post was the idea that the single cell (microcosm) already contained many of the features of multicellular organisms like us (macrocosm), and since the embryo begins as a single cell, we might find that it relives the history of evolution itself – the very embodiment of common descent. But I don’t have the scientific background to know whether this is reading too much into what we have learned about the cell. I had hoped that you might offer a scientific view.

A single cell is forced to be able to do all those functions. I see nothing more.

Transferred from “Divine purposes and methods”:
DAVID: Bacterial intelligence is the intelligent information and instructions in their DNA. I have God as a logical source for it. And as a result I believe that bacteria are totally autonomic.

dhw: If God exists, then of course he is the logical source. He would also be the logical source of the autonomous bacterial intelligence which Shapiro & Co. believe in.

DAVID: As with my faith, 'belief' is not proof.

dhw: Agreed. Hence your own agreement that you and they have a 50/50 chance of being correct. But your God can still be the logical source, whichever belief is correct.

Of course. WE can invent 'God' any way we wish.