LUCA latest: Shapiro redux (Introduction)

by David Turell , Wednesday, July 19, 2023, 17:28 (283 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: Whoa! What Shapiro studied was bacteria, which represent the unevolved start of life. They cannot represent the future.

dhw: How many more times? You have agreed that Shapiro would have known about other life forms, and his conclusions are not based solely on bacterial behaviour, and the theory of cellular intelligence has been embraced by other experts in the field. And this is a complete digression from the subject, which was Moran’s objections.

DAVID: Of course Shapiro knew all of the other research. His theory is based on his bacterial works and is an extrapolation into a theory that explains natural evolution asking, if bacteria can edit DNA why can't that explain evolution. But editing elsewhere is not present. End of theory.

dhw: Of course editing is present elsewhere! How can evolution have proceeded without it?

Don't try that. All we know about now is epigenetics for minor adaptations, not speciation!!!

dhw: But you insist that only your God could have preprogrammed the editing 3.8 billion years ago, or popped in over and over and over and over again to do a dabble (even though 99% of his dabbles had no connection with the only dabbles he actually wanted to perform). And you find this absurd theory more convincing than the proposal that he might have designed a mechanism whereby the cells themselves did/do their own editing, or ultimately failed/fail to edit themselves successfully – hence the 99% extinction rate which you prefer to attribute to your God’s messy, cumbersome and inefficient method of design.

Your absurd approach of cell committees producing speciation is a wild theory, based solely on the observation cells act as if intelligent when it all can be explained as automaticity. The intense requirements for design of complex biochemical reactions requires a mind in action, one simple biochemical cells cannot create.