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I've been discussing patterns of life in the organ systems that have to be developed to have complex advanced life emerge. Convergence, the phenomenon of similar organs or structures with similar function in different species, supports this idea of patterns of development:-"The team's results demonstrate that the evolution of overall gene expression underlying convergent complex traits may be predictable. This finding is unexpected and could indicate unusually strong constraints: The probability of complex organs evolving multiple times with similar trajectories should be vanishingly small, noted Oakley. Yet the team's novel bioinformatic approaches indicate the evolution of convergent phenotypes is associated with the convergent expression of thousands of genes."-Smells of pre-programming, doesn't it?-http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/10/141021135020.htm-This also belongs in Natures wonders, because of the symbiosis of bioluminesent bacteria in the employ of the squid:-"They chose to work with the Hawaiian bobtail squid (Euprymna scolopes) and the swordtip squid (Uroteuthis edulis), a Japanese species used for sushi. These distantly related species are two of five genera known to have bioluminescent organs called photophores. The photophores contain symbiotic, light-emitting bacteria, and the squid are capable of controlling the aperture of their organ to modulate how much light is produced."

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Careful thought and scientific facts support Michael Denton's observation that Darwinian evolution is "a theory in crisis". Note the patterns referred to throughout the article:-http://inference-review.com/article/evolution-a-theory-in-crisis-revisited-part-one-This obviously supports Tony's views, althouhg I imagine he might state it quite differently.-By the way, Denton's first book is a marvelously clear understandable read, and was one of my first hints that Darwin's theory was all wrong.

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The mathematical 'golden ratio' is another pattern:-http://m.phys.org/news/2014-11-golden-ratio-unity-science.html-"It is said to represent a "cosmic constant" found in the curvature of elephant tusks, the shape of a kudu's horn, the destructive beauty of Hurricane Katrina, and in the astronomical grandeur of how planets, moons, asteroids and rings are distributed in the solar system, to name but a few. -"Now, researchers from the Universities of the Witwatersrand and Pretoria are also suggesting that the "Golden Ratio" - designated by the Greek symbol ? (letter Phi) with a mathematical value of about 1.618 - also relates to the topology of space-time, and to a biological species constant (T)."

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The pattern of mutations also follows a ratio:-"According to the researchers, mutations of genes are not randomly distributed between the parental chromosomes. They found that 60 percent of mutations affect the same chromosome set and 40 percent both sets. Scientists refer to these as cis and trans mutations, respectively. Evidently, an organism must have more cis mutations, where the second gene form remains intact. "It's amazing how precisely the 60:40 ratio is maintained. It occurs in the genome of every individual - almost like a magic formula," says Hoehe. The 60:40 distribution ratio appears to be essential for survival. "This formula may help us to understand how gene variability occurs and how it affects gene function.'"-http://medicalxpress.com/news/2014-11-duality-human-genome.html

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Another pattern is the ability to avoid fainting with rapid upward movements of the body. If you are lying prone or with your head slightly down jumping up generally does not cause you to feel faint from sudden lack of blood flow to the brain. The protective mechanism is like a G-suit and present in most animals besides humans. To accomplish this there are multiple coordinated adjustments in the circulatory system, which certainly look irreducibly complex for simple mutation after mutation development. It must be put together all at once.:-" Another enormous difficulty for the evolutionary paradigm is the fact that humans demonstrate a physiologic capacity (to tolerate up to 3-5 g's) that is useful to us now, but which theoretically evolved without an environmental pressure to enable or "guide natural selection. How then can strictly naturalistic processes account for the human organism evolving or adapting such a function to begin with? We do not experience high dynamic states except as an artifact of the modern Western industrial revolution. To have evolved this capacity seems impossible.-""The reflective reader may ask, "Isn't this function found in other mammals?" Yes, it is. But though some might argue that this "homologue" supports Darwinian evolution, it still suffers from the same problem of irreducible complexity. Moreover, we can argue that the correspondence between the human and the animal capacity to tolerate certain levels of g-forces demonstrates common designa divine Engineer's reuse of functional systems and designsrather than common descent. (my bold)-"A simple solution to this conundrum posits design by an intentional Creator. After all, we know that the g-suit created for aviators required thought, planning, and design by human agents. Both the very existence of humanity's built-in g-suit function and the function's irreducible complexity make much better sense from a creation model perspective."-http://www.reasons.org/articles/humanitys-built-in-g-suit-a-product-of-evolution-or-creation

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The funny thing about the scientific literature and thought is when a new idea occurs to me, or in fact brought home to me by Tony's comments about setting up basic pattern programs in computer development (Thank you, Tony) it is helping solve my dilemma. God is seen as a master programmer who uses basic patterns to make evolutionary development easier to program. So the light bulb goes off, and I look at the literature, and patterns are everywhere. The phenomenon of "convergence" when totally different species exhibit the same 'new' structure or ability is strong evidence of patterns being used from the basic beginnings of life. In this way an IM or NREH taps into the recorded ancient pattern in the genome and makes some modification to fit the current requirement. Thus the step forward in evolutionary development comes from the past, guided by it, makes a small limited modification, and something somewhat new appears. In my words 'semi-autonomous and under guidelines'. All of this primarily programmed from the beginning of life. My dilemma shrinks as I think and we discuss.

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DAVID: The funny thing about the scientific literature and thought is when a new idea occurs to me, or in fact brought home to me by Tony's comments about setting up basic pattern programs in computer development (Thank you, Tony) it is helping solve my dilemma. God is seen as a master programmer who uses basic patterns to make evolutionary development easier to program. So the light bulb goes off, and I look at the literature, and patterns are everywhere. The phenomenon of "convergence" when totally different species exhibit the same 'new' structure or ability is strong evidence of patterns being used from the basic beginnings of life. In this way an IM or NREH taps into the recorded ancient pattern in the genome and makes some modification to fit the current requirement. Thus the step forward in evolutionary development comes from the past, guided by it, makes a small limited modification, and something somewhat new appears. In my words 'semi-autonomous and under guidelines'. All of this primarily programmed from the beginning of life. My dilemma shrinks as I think and we discuss.-I don't think even a hardened evolutionary atheist would dispute that there are patterns. They give powerful support to common descent, which lies at the very heart of the theory. Convergence makes perfect sense if we accept the premise that organisms are intelligent beings, and will come up with similar (though personalized) solutions when confronted with similar problems. Why must monarchs delve or tap into ancient God-given patterns? Can't migration be seen as an example of convergence, in which birds and butterflies feel the pinch and realize they've gotta get up an' go, or it's all over? Hardly rocket science, is it? Where and how far they go will depend on their own capabilities, but once they find a suitable new home, they maintain the migratory pattern they have established. If Mexico suddenly turned glacial all the year round, your monarch would find somewhere else to go or he'd abdicate. -However, the real difficulty as always is not small, limited modifications, to which you confine the IM, but innovations. When you say all of this primarily programmed from the beginning of life, you are blurring distinctions, since this refers to the IM. You keep insisting that your God preprogrammed the very first minuscule living cells to cover every single MAJOR modification (= innovation) plus every single individualistic lifestyle (monarch, plover, E.coli), leading from bacteria to humans. You love to produce statistics to prove the impossibility of chance. How many programmes would your God have had to put into those first cells, allowing for every possible type of environment? With your new-found confidence, you have even decided to discount divine dabbling, which makes evolution totally reliant on programmes to be passed on from the very beginning. And since your God did not control the environment, these could have been wiped out at any moment by a catastrophe, thus scuppering all his alleged plans for humans. Whereabouts in the scientific literature have you found support for this hypothesis? At least my own has the scientific backing of specialists who emphasize the intelligence and cooperativeness of cells, and it still allows for your God to be the source of the inventive mechanism.

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> dhw: I don't think even a hardened evolutionary atheist would dispute that there are patterns. They give powerful support to common descent, which lies at the very heart of the theory. Convergence makes perfect sense if we accept the premise that organisms are intelligent beings, and will come up with similar (though personalized) solutions when confronted with similar problems.-What convergence really tells us is that basic patterns of response are present from the beginnings of life, so that very disparate, unrelated species can come up with the same answers as necessary. This implies controls as well as suggestions for innovation. ->dhw: How many programmes would your God have had to put into those first cells, allowing for every possible type of environment? With your new-found confidence, you have even decided to discount divine dabbling, which makes evolution totally reliant on programmes to be passed on from the very beginning. And since your God did not control the environment, these could have been wiped out at any moment by a catastrophe, -Your concept of MY God requires that his powers are limited. That is because you cannot accept the idea that He might exist. You have no right to question my concept of His abilities with your wishes. I fully think HE can put that much programming into the beginning code to handle evolution as I see it. And I don't know where you got the idea that God, as I view Him, has no environmental control at all. I just don't know how much He does or does not have.-> dhw: Whereabouts in the scientific literature have you found support for this hypothesis? At least my own has the scientific backing of specialists who emphasize the intelligence and cooperativeness of cells, and it still allows for your God to be the source of the inventive mechanism.-I find support in the ID literature, and they do have peer-reviewed papers in the literature. I am, as always, allowed to interpret the research results as I see fit. Research findings are just a beginning. Interpretation is another step. You keep throwing scientists' names at me as if they absolutely had the truth and nothing but the truth. They don't. They have opinions, nothing more. They are concluding more than can be known currently. They have the right to do that. So do I and so do you. Frankly using their quotes, which I have generally supplied for you, proves nothing. I am content with my own interpretations of their work.

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DAVID: What convergence really tells us is that basic patterns of response are present from the beginnings of life, so that very disparate, unrelated species can come up with the same answers as necessary. This implies controls as well as suggestions for innovation. -Why really? Convergence tells us that organisms come up with the same answers. Your preprogramming hypothesis is no more logical than the argument that the same problems will elicit the same solutions from intelligent beings, and it is the potential intelligence (the IM) that has been present from the beginnings of life.-dhw: How many programmes would your God have had to put into those first cells, allowing for every possible type of environment? With your new-found confidence, you have even decided to discount divine dabbling, which makes evolution totally reliant on programmes to be passed on from the very beginning. And since your God did not control the environment, these could have been wiped out at any moment by a catastrophe, 
DAVID: Your concept of MY God requires that his powers are limited. That is because you cannot accept the idea that He might exist. You have no right to question my concept of His abilities with your wishes. -I have challenged your interpretation of his purpose, not his powers, though limited powers are one possible explanation of the evolutionary bush. Creating an autonomous inventive mechanism, perhaps to relieve boredom, places no restriction on his powers. Nor does dabbling when he feels like it. I do accept the idea that God MIGHT exist (I'm an agnostic, not an atheist), and my concept of the inventive mechanism allows for his existence. The issue between us here is not the existence of God or the range of his abilities, but the possible autonomy of the IM, which seems to me a simpler and more convincing explanation of the higgledy-piggledy bush than your God preprogramming the first cells with every innovation and complex lifestyle from bacteria to humans.
 
DAVID: And I don't know where you got the idea that God, as I view Him, has no environmental control at all. I just don't know how much He does or does not have-Then it's you who are limiting his powers. However, under DILEMMAS, on 16 November at 15.02, I wrote: I forgot to mention that he would have had to preprogramme every environmental change as well. You responded at 21.38: [...] I think the environment and the evolution of the universe follows physical principles, and God doesn't need to intervene. Chicxulub speeded up the appearance of mammals as dominant, but that would have eventually occurred anyway, just later. Since then I have repeatedly pointed out that he was therefore relying on luck to produce the right conditions or not to obliterate his programme-carrying cells. For instance, on 22 November at 01.27: ...and you think he left that life at the mercy of chance. Well, if he could leave the environment to luck, to see what might happen, maybe he left the inventive mechanism to its own devices as well. You replied: Or enough information is implanted from the beginning in the IM so it can handle the adaptations. No contradiction from you there, but now suddenly God's control of the environment has become a matter of degree. So if he is in partial control, are you saying Chixculub was an accident or an intervention? My point is that if humans were preprogrammed, he would also have had to preprogramme all environmental changes (to get the right environment and to prevent catastrophe), or to dabble, or to rely on luck, all of which hypotheses you now seem to reject.
 
dhw: Whereabouts in the scientific literature have you found support for this hypothesis? At least my own has the scientific backing of specialists who emphasize the intelligence and cooperativeness of cells, and it still allows for your God to be the source of the inventive mechanism.
DAVID: I find support in the ID literature, and they do have peer-reviewed papers in the literature. [...] You keep throwing scientists' names at me as if they absolutely had the truth and nothing but the truth. They don't. They have opinions, nothing more. [...] Frankly using their quotes, which I have generally supplied for you, proves nothing. I am content with my own interpretations of their work.-It would be interesting to know which ID-ers actually posit your theory that the genome contains 3.7-billion-year-old programmes for every single innovation and complex lifestyle. I throw names at you because if experts in the field conclude that cells are sentient, cognitive beings, I see no reason to assert, as you keep doing, that the IM is capable only of minor modifications and not of invention, which can only occur through God's pregiven instructions. On the other thread, you wrote: To be precise: an epigenetic IM exists, its limits for invention are unknown. That far more conciliatory statement is the basis of my plea for open-mindedness.

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> dhw: Why really? Convergence tells us that organisms come up with the same answers. Your preprogramming hypothesis is no more logical than the argument that the same problems will elicit the same solutions from intelligent beings, and it is the potential intelligence (the IM) that has been present from the beginnings of life.-You want your intelligent beings to be way more competent than they obviously aren't. An IM is programmed guidance. 
> 
> dhw: I do accept the idea that God MIGHT exist (I'm an agnostic, not an atheist), and my concept of the inventive mechanism allows for his existence. The issue between us here is not the existence of God or the range of his abilities, but the possible autonomy of the IM, which seems to me a simpler and more convincing explanation of the higgledy-piggledy bush than your God preprogramming the first cells with every innovation and complex lifestyle from bacteria to humans.-You keep ignoring my stepwise programming concept as helped by Tony. I think the bush is because of a semi-autonomous IM.-
> dhw: No contradiction from you there, but now suddenly God's control of the environment has become a matter of degree. So if he is in partial control, are you saying Chixculub was an accident or an intervention? My point is that if humans were preprogrammed, he would also have had to preprogramme all environmental changes (to get the right environment and to prevent catastrophe), or to dabble, or to rely on luck, all of which hypotheses you now seem to reject.-You want too much exactitude about God. He managed to program our universe in a way that we arrived. Did he have to adjust the environment so we would appear? Again probably not. Might something unforeseen happen? Possibly. These are unanswerable sidetracks.-> 
> dhw: It would be interesting to know which ID-ers actually posit your theory that the genome contains 3.7-billion-year-old programmes for every single innovation and complex lifestyle.... I see no reason to assert, as you keep doing, that the IM is capable only of minor modifications and not of invention, which can only occur through God's pregiven instructions. On the other thread, you wrote: To be precise: an epigenetic IM exists, its limits for invention are unknown. That far more conciliatory statement is the basis of my plea for open-mindedness.-You want a very robust IM, as it reduces the need for a powerful God, and helps your agnosticism. I equate very competent early programming of evolution with a stronger evidence for God.

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dhw: Convergence tells us that organisms come up with the same answers. Your preprogramming hypothesis is no more logical than the argument that the same problems will elicit the same solutions from intelligent beings, and it is the potential intelligence (the IM) that has been present from the beginnings of lifeDAVID: You want your intelligent beings to be way more competent than they obviously aren't. An IM is programmed guidance.-This is the dogmatism that makes your reasoning so hard to follow. On Tuesday you wrote: ...an epigenetic IM exists, its limits for invention are unknown, but on Wednesday its limits for invention are obviously known. -dhw: The issue between us here is not the existence of God or the range of his abilities, but the possible autonomy of the IM, which seems to me a simpler and more convincing explanation of the higgledy-piggledy bush than your God preprogramming the first cells with every innovation and complex lifestyle from bacteria to humans.
DAVID: You keep ignoring my stepwise programming concept as helped by Tony. I think the bush is because of a semi-autonomous IM.-Your stepwise programme is presumably from bacteria to humans. You have told us that 99% of the species in between are extinct. Either God planned them or he didn't. If he didn't, their IM was autonomous. If he did, why were they all necessary for the production of humans? Might they not have been part of an unfolding, unpredictable spectacle designed to relieve God's boredom, or part of an experiment to see where an autonomous mechanism might lead, or part of a project to create a self-aware being like himself, requiring experimentation along the way? All these hypotheses would provide a logical theistic explanation for the higgledy-piggledy bush, with its variety and its comings and goings, but I guess you know God better than I do.
 
dhw: My point is that if humans were preprogrammed, he would also have had to preprogramme all environmental changes (to get the right environment and to prevent catastrophe), or to dabble, or to rely on luck, all of which hypotheses you now seem to reject.
DAVID: You want too much exactitude about God. He managed to program our universe in a way that we arrived. Did he have to adjust the environment so we would appear? Again probably not. Might something unforeseen happen? Possibly. These are unanswerable sidetracks.-They are certainly unanswerable, but they are sidetracks from what? This whole quest is for the truth about how we got here. Since humans could not exist without a suitable environment, the problem of environmental change is fundamental to your anthropocentric hypothesis, which may be wrong. The higgledy-piggledy bush does not support it. Disasters like Chicxulub do not support it. Mass extinctions do not support it. In each case you have to grub around for vague ways of justifying your huge leap from the fact that we are here to the assumption that we were meant to be here from the very beginning.
 
DAVID: You want a very robust IM, as it reduces the need for a powerful God, and helps your agnosticism. I equate very competent early programming of evolution with a stronger evidence for God.-I don't WANT anything. I admit my ignorance, and therefore leave my options open. Might it be that you want a weak IM because a strong one would undermine your argument for anthropocentric evolution preprogrammed from the very beginning? Your starting point is your fixed belief. Mine is an attempt to find a convincing explanation for the higgledy-piggledy course of evolution, whether God started it all off or not. But you are right: the concept of an autonomous IM, just like evolution itself, fits in both with theism and with atheism. However, I don't see that as a reason for rejecting it.

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> dhw: This is the dogmatism that makes your reasoning so hard to follow. On Tuesday you wrote: ...an epigenetic IM exists, its limits for invention are unknown, but on Wednesday its limits for invention are obviously known. -Let's make it absolutely clear. I think the IM ( if it exists, and I think it probably does) is quite limited, as described.
> 
> dhw: Your stepwise programme is presumably from bacteria to humans. You have told us that 99% of the species in between are extinct. Either God planned them or he didn't. If he didn't, their IM was autonomous. If he did, why were they all necessary for the production of humans? ....... but I guess you know God better than I do.-I think I do know God better since I accept Him. Well, that is not really true, but I think about God differently than you do. I believe in God-guided evolution. As you know the dilemma came from not knowing how much dabbling He might have to do. With our discussion of an IM and learning from Tony how progressive programming might have been arranged, Bacteria started with a seriously complex DNA. It had to be. And to me a God-guided semi-independent inventive mechanism can explain the evolutionary pattern we see. You see it differently. We disagree. I see cells as a series of molecular reactions. It is very difficult for me to understand how a multi-cellular complex organism like an early mammal can conjure up major modifications involving many different types of cells, each with differing DNA; again the whale series. I suggest you look at it, because it involves major changes with each step, with no tiny intermediate steps found. To my an IM can only do this under conscious guidance and planning.
> 
> dhw: This whole quest is for the truth about how we got here. Since humans could not exist without a suitable environment, the problem of environmental change is fundamental to your anthropocentric hypothesis, which may be wrong. The higgledy-piggledy bush does not support it.-The bush is not a denial. It is evidence that life can be very inventive. I don't expect a direct line from bacteria to man, why do you? You try to interpret God more than I do. -> dhw: Disasters like Chicxulub do not support it. Mass extinctions do not support it. In each case you have to grub around for vague ways of justifying your huge leap from the fact that we are here to the assumption that we were meant to be here from the very beginning.-Again, you are interpreting what God might or might not have allowed. We are here, that is indisputable, and against all odds. That is the view I see. 
> 
>dhw: I admit my ignorance, and therefore leave my options open. Might it be that you want a weak IM because a strong one would undermine your argument for anthropocentric evolution preprogrammed from the very beginning? Your starting point is your fixed belief. Mine is an attempt to find a convincing explanation for the higgledy-piggledy course of evolution, whether God started it all off or not. But you are right: the concept of an autonomous IM, just like evolution itself, fits in both with theism and with atheism. However, I don't see that as a reason for rejecting it.-With both admit we are discussing from ignorance of underlying mechanisms. I don't reject a semiautonomous IM, just a totally independent one.

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DAVID: Let's make it absolutely clear. I think the IM ( if it exists, and I think it probably does) is quite limited, as described.-Thank you for this welcome modification. On Wednesday you wrote: You want your intelligent beings to be way more competent than they obviously aren't [sic]. An IM is programmed guidance. This is what I call dogmatism. You admitted earlier that the limits for the IM's inventiveness are unknown, and so there is nothing obvious about its limitations, and you cannot state that the IM is programmed guidance. As Tony frequently reminds us, scientists should not state their opinions as if they were facts.-DAVID: I believe in God-guided evolution.-Here are three alternative scenarios for a God-guided evolution: an unpredictable spectacle (perhaps to relieve boredom), a scientific experiment to see where it might lead (dabbling allowed), a project to create a self-aware being like himself, requiring experimentation (dabbling) as he didn't know how to do it. They all explain the higgledy-piggledy bush.-DAVID: And to me a God-guided semi-independent inventive mechanism can explain the evolutionary pattern we see.-If God preprogrammed evolution to produce humans, why did he preprogramme the monarch butterfly's itinerary, the spider's silk, and all the species that went extinct? If you can't think why, then maybe you should consider the above alternative explanations of the bush. Semi-independent, semi-autonomous are weasel words. An inventive mechanism invents. It doesn't merely obey instructions. -DAVID: It is very difficult for me to understand how a multi-cellular complex organism like an early mammal can conjure up major modifications involving many different types of cells, each with differing DNA...-Agreed. Nobody understands it. That's why we have different theories, one of which is cooperation between intelligent organisms. It is very difficult to understand why your God would start off with a plan to produce humans, but would preprogramme the first cells with millions of different life forms and lifestyles, 99% of which would perish along the way.
 
dhw: Since humans could not exist without a suitable environment, the problem of environmental change is fundamental to your anthropocentric hypothesis, which may be wrong. The higgledy-piggledy bush does not support it.
DAVID: The bush is not a denial. It is evidence that life can be very inventive. I don't expect a direct line from bacteria to man, why do you? You try to interpret God more than I do. -Life doesn't exist without living creatures. It is not life that is inventive but living creatures. And if living creatures are inventive, they must have the means with which to invent. I certainly don't expect a direct line between bacteria and humans, because I question your hypothesis that God started life with the intention of producing humans. That is a major problem with your hypothesis. Why are there so many different lines if the Almighty had one particular line in mind? I offer different possible interpretations of God's intentions, but you are bound by one, and it colours all your thinking.
 
dhw: Disasters like Chicxulub do not support it. Mass extinctions do not support it. In each case you have to grub around for vague ways of justifying your huge leap from the fact that we are here to the assumption that we were meant to be here from the very beginning.
DAVID: Again, you are interpreting what God might or might not have allowed. We are here, that is indisputable, and against all odds. That is the view I see.-The monarch, the spider and the plover are also here against all odds, and the trilobite and the dinosaurs were here against all odds, but they ain't here now. If you insist that God started evolution in order to produce humans, you can't ignore the production of an environment in which humans could live. And if you can't explain the relevance of the bush, or Chixculub, or mass extinctions, and even have to hum and haw over whether God did or didn't preprogramme the environmental changes, then once again maybe you should be prepared at least to consider other interpretations of your God's intentions. -dhw: I admit my ignorance, and therefore leave my options open. [...] Your starting point is your fixed belief. Mine is an attempt to find a convincing explanation for the higgledy-piggledy course of evolution, whether God started it all off or not. 
DAVID: With both admit we are discussing from ignorance of underlying mechanisms. I don't reject a semiautonomous IM, just a totally independent one.-You believe there is an autonomous mechanism that can do its own inventing: the human brain. Do you not think your God could produce other forms of brain that could do their own inventing?

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> DAVID: I believe in God-guided evolution.
> 
> dhw: Here are three alternative scenarios for a God-guided evolution: an unpredictable spectacle (perhaps to relieve boredom), a scientific experiment to see where it might lead (dabbling allowed), a project to create a self-aware being like himself, requiring experimentation (dabbling) as he didn't know how to do it. They all explain the higgledy-piggledy bush.-This is your version of a possible God-influenced evolution. It is not mine. I accept that God started life with a very programmed DNA. No boredom, it is a human frailty. No experimentation, He knew where it was going, humans. My only problem was fully front-end loaded or some midway adjustments. The IM allows for the adjustments on a semiautomatic guideline basis. The bush provides balance in nature to provide a hierarchy of food sources.
> 
> DAVID: And to me a God-guided semi-independent inventive mechanism can explain the evolutionary pattern we see.
> 
> dhw: If God preprogrammed evolution to produce humans, why did he preprogramme the monarch butterfly's itinerary, the spider's silk, and all the species that went extinct?-Explained by balance.-> dhw: If you can't think why, then maybe you should consider the above alternative explanations of the bush. Semi-independent, semi-autonomous are weasel words. An inventive mechanism invents. It doesn't merely obey instructions.-It invents by following instructional guidelines. Guidelines allow latitude to a degree. I don't know how much degree, but you seem positive an IM can invent anything it wants. How do you know that?
 
> dhw:It is very difficult to understand why your God would start off with a plan to produce humans, but would preprogramme the first cells with millions of different life forms and lifestyles, 99% of which would perish along the way.-Getting to complex organisms that now exist on Earth requires going through many intermediate forms if one starts with single cells. The intermediates were simply discarded as they were surpassed by later more complex forms. I presume what is now present represents the goal.
> 
>dhw: once again maybe you should be prepared at least to consider other interpretations of your God's intentions.-He is my God. I interpret Him as I see fit.
 
> DAVID: With both admit we are discussing from ignorance of underlying mechanisms. I don't reject a semiautonomous IM, just a totally independent one.
> 
> dhw: You believe there is an autonomous mechanism that can do its own inventing: the human brain. Do you not think your God could produce other forms of brain that could do their own inventing?-You are once again mixing apples and oranges, or in this case brains and genomes. Brains plan and invent, but it takes hands and manufacturing to complete the process to a finished product. The genome must produce a new differing code which then can put together a different phenotype or a different biologic process. Not in the same league as brain-work. But then again, you want your committee of cells to mimic Einstein, extrapolating from scientific hyperbole!

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Another study to show basic patterns in genetic networks:-"The house mouse, stickleback fish and honey bee appear to have little in common, but at the genetic level these creatures respond in strikingly similar ways to danger, researchers report. When any of these animals confronts an intruder, the researchers found, many of the same genes and brain gene networks gear up or down in response." -"We knew that a variety of animals share genes for some common physical traits. Now it appears that different organisms share a 'genetic toolkit' for behavioral traits, as well," Stubbs said.- Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2014-12-species-genetic-toolkit-behavioral-traits.html#jCp-This is another piece of evidence in the importance of pattern establishment early in evolution to then allow inventive mechanisms to modify animals or plants without disrupting the advance of evolution.

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Much of our reality can be understood in mathematics. Einstein's theories showed this beautifully. Now an ecologist shows this in his article:-http://nautil.us/issue/29/scaling/the-hidden-power-laws-of-ecosystems-"Brown and Maurer had been influenced heavily by regularities in many ecological phenomena. One of these, called the species-area curve, was discovered back in the 19th century, and formalized in 1921. That curve emerged when naturalists counted the number of species (of plants, insects, mammals, and so on) found in plots laid out in backyards, savannahs, and forests. They discovered that the number of species increased with the area of the plot, as expected. But as the plot size kept increasing, the rate of increase in the number of species began to plateau. Even more remarkable, the same basic species-area curve was found regardless of the species or habitat. To put it mathematically, the curve followed a power law, in which the change in species number increased proportionally to the square root of the square root of the area.-***-"Bacteria seemed like the obvious subject, partly because they're incredibly abundant, and partly because DNA sequence data gives us a window into their evolutionary history. Our plan was to count numbers of species, just as was done in species-area curves. But instead of area, we'd use some measure of time.-"We constructed that measure by comparing DNA sequences among our bacteria, and drawing trees of life. Each branch of a tree represented a new bacterial lineagesome kind of diversification of life deep in the past. The average evolutionary distance (or branch length) between the species on the tree quantified their relatedness through time. The microbes we sampled came from about 25 different habitats, including the nasal cavity of humans, human feces, the surface of plant leaves, the Antarctic Ocean, and water from the English Channel.-***-"When we plotted average evolutionary distance against species number, we found the power law lurking in yet another dimension of ecology: The distance increased rapidly at first, then began to slow in the same manner as the species-area curve. The reasons for this behavior are not clear at the moment. One possibility is that both spatial and temporal scaling behaviors are affected by a burstiness, in which periods of stasis are punctuated by rapid periods of diversification. In our bacterial trees we found that these bursty expansions have a fractal distribution, also described by a power law, and they could point to radiations of species through both time and space.-"The power laws we see for evolutionary distance and diversification point once again to a simple, mechanistic, and relatively detail-free view of ecology at the biggest scales. They're just not quite as simple as what has been proposed for spatial patterns. They take at least one step back down the spectrum toward needing real ecological and evolutionary mechanisms to explain macroecological patterns."-Comment: What if God is really a mathematician. It sure looks that way.

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This ratio is seen throughout nature, both biological and cosmological:-http://www.sajs.co.za/sites/default/files/publications/pdf/Boeyens_SciCo.pdf-"Within recent millennia, sentient representatives of the species Homo sapiens have explored science with a sense of curiosity. Currently there are schoolchildren, university students and academic researchers, in Africa and elsewhere, asking questions about relativity, mass, space, particles, waves, space-time and the nature of constants in the fields of mathematics, physics, chemistry and biology.1 Recently, questions have been raised about whether an irrational mathematical constant - designated by the Greek symbol ? with a value of about 1.618 - can be
related to a biological species constant (T), based on morphometric analyses of modern mammalian skulls, and explored in the context of probabilities of conspecificity of Plio-Pleistocene hominin fossils.2-4 We suggest that there
is a strong case that this so-called Golden Ratio' (1.61803...) can be related not only to aspects of mathematics but also to physics, chemistry, biology and the topology of space-time.-"A convincing case for assuming a cosmic character of the Golden Ratio can be made based on the ubiquity of logarithmic spirals. Spectacular examples include the Whirlpool Galaxy (M51), ammonites, the shape of Nautilus shells, Hurricane Katrina and the distribution of planets, moons, asteroids and rings in the solar system (Figure 1). The logarithmic spiral is firmly related to the Fibonacci series and the Golden Ratio of number theory. A familiar aspect of Fibonacci spirals is the way they feature in botanical phyllotaxis, the shape of kudu (Tragelaphus strepsiceros) horns and the curvature of elephant tusks. Less well known is the way in which the crystallographic structure of DNA, stress patterns in nanomaterials, the stability of atomic nuclides and the periodicity of atomic matter depend on the Golden Ratio.1 Apart from the Golden Ratio, a second common factor among this variety of structures is that they all represent spontaneous growth patterns. The argument that this amazing consilience (self-similarity') arises from a response to a common environmental constraint, which can only be an intrinsic feature of curved space-time, is compelling."-Comment: Just more evidence that God makes his job easier with patterns.

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Comment: Just more evidence that God makes his job easier with patterns.-More evidence for a god that mathematically approximates?

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David: Comment: Just more evidence that God makes his job easier with patterns.
> 
> Romansh: More evidence for a god that mathematically approximates?-You deny the patterns?

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David: Comment: Just more evidence that God makes his job easier with patterns.
> > Romansh: More evidence for a god that mathematically approximates?-> David You deny the patterns?-Not at all David. I just don't see this as evidence for god. -I am surprised that you even have to ask.

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David You deny the patterns?
> 
> Romansh: Not at all David. I just don't see this as evidence for god. -Well, there are folks who do, so I felt it should be presented. There is no absolute proof, but we all know that.

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David You deny the patterns?
> > Romansh: Not at all David. I just don't see this as evidence for god. 
> David: Well, there are folks who do, 
Well there are folk who sincerely believe the Earth is flat.
Some believe they have been abducted by UFOs
Astrology?
>so I felt it should be presented.
Are you going to present their evidence too?
>There is no absolute proof, 
while personally I tend to agree with statement
I cannot say
>but we all know that.
because I have no way of knowing (as a weak agnostic as opposed to a strong one) what other people know or don't know and the validity of their beliefs.-
I like the analogy of our knowledge being a little bit like cosmic inflation. While our "knowledge" increase in leaps and bounds; our ignorance, the boundary between what we know and don't know also increases.

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Romansh: because I have no way of knowing (as a weak agnostic as opposed to a strong one) what other people know or don't know and the validity of their beliefs.-There are two very different parts to that thought, (1) the depth of their knowledge and (2) whether their beliefs are provable. which implies, how much analytic thought are they willing to expend. I think only few take the challenge to think things out. Most accept what is handed to them.
> 
> 
> Romansh: I like the analogy of our knowledge being a little bit like cosmic inflation. While our "knowledge" increase in leaps and bounds; our ignorance, the boundary between what we know and don't know also increases.-You are right. We are inundated with 'science facts', and considering the fraud in government-funded grant research, legitimate and illegitimate avenues for research open up.

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I think only few take the challenge to think things out. Most accept what is handed to them.-The problem with "thinking things out" is we can come to very different conclusions.
You appear to use an argument from incredulity to base your belief in god, universal consciousness, quantum consciousness, dualism etc. -I don't find arguments from incredulity that convincing.

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Romansh; You appear to use an argument from incredulity to base your belief in god, universal consciousness, quantum consciousness, dualism etc. 
> 
> I don't find arguments from incredulity that convincing.-I'm not surprised at your comment. It's not that I am incredulous in the conventional sense. If one looks at the complexity of genome controls, I cannot believe chance can invent them. What other choice is there? The Cambrian Explosion defies explanation. The origin of life studies for 60+ years offer no clear roads to success. Did chance development really produced our fine-tuned universe ( and I don't buy Stenger's rebuttals, having read enough criticism of his strange ideas)? The list goes on an on. Starting as an agnostic, I move further and further away from that position.

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David: I'm not surprised at your comment. It's not that I am incredulous in the conventional sense. If one looks at the complexity of genome controls, I cannot believe chance can invent them. What other choice is there? 
In another thread you suggested you did not have dhw's imagination. 
Well, just for the moment, imagine that your thinking things through is faulty.
That you don't quite understand all the nuances of the discussion well enough to come to a conclusion.
>David: The Cambrian Explosion defies explanation. 
Therefore god did it?
> David: The origin of life studies for 60+ years offer no clear roads to success. 
Therefore god did it?
> David: Did chance development really produced our fine-tuned universe ( and I don't buy Stenger's rebuttals, having read enough criticism of his strange ideas)? 
I don't buy all the fine tuning and infinite multiverse arguments either. 
But that does not force me to come to the conclusion that god did it.
> David: The list goes on an on. Starting as an agnostic, I move further and further away from that position.
Therefore god did it?-I must say I generally find your reasoning has gaps.

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> Romansh: I must say I generally find your reasoning has gaps.-I'm not surprised. I've filled two books with my reasoning. I can't do justice here.

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I'm not surprised. I've filled two books with my reasoning. I can't do justice here.-Have you ever considered the possibility that your reasoning might just be faulty?

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David: I'm not surprised. I've filled two books with my reasoning. I can't do justice here.
> 
> Romansh: Have you ever considered the possibility that your reasoning might just be faulty?-Funny but I just got an email from the Netherlands telling me my recent book is 'marvelous'.-From your viewpoint, my reasoning is faulty. So be it.

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David: I'm not surprised. I've filled two books with my reasoning. I can't do justice here.
> > 
> > Romansh: Have you ever considered the possibility that your reasoning might just be faulty?
> 
> Funny but I just got an email from the Netherlands telling me my recent book is 'marvelous'.
> 
> From your viewpoint, my reasoning is faulty. So be it.-David you avoided my question?-Congratulations on your email.

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> > David: Funny but I just got an email from the Netherlands telling me my recent book is 'marvelous'.
> > 
> > From your viewpoint, my reasoning is faulty. So be it.
> 
> Romansh: David you avoided my question?-I don't think so.
> 
> Romansh: Congratulations on your email.-Thank you.

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Romansh: David you avoided my question?
> I don't think so.-Then humour me please David, because I have no solid idea whether you think you could be wrong.-But as you have dropped the agnostic moniker I suspect you think there is not any chance that you might be wrong. Plus you have gone to the effort of writing a book about your position.-I have no problem admitting I could be wrong. At the very, very best I would be incomplete.

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> Romansh: Then humour me please David, because I have no solid idea whether you think you could be wrong.
> 
> But as you have dropped the agnostic moniker I suspect you think there is not any chance that you might be wrong. Plus you have gone to the effort of writing a book about your position.
> 
> I have no problem admitting I could be wrong. At the very, very best I would be incomplete.-I am dealing with my own personal conclusions after many years of reading starting in the late 1970's. I was a superficial agnostic after medical school, not having given much thought to the issue. Then I decided to plant my thinking somewhere more solidly, and this is where I arrived. I've authored two books on the subject, one in 2004 and the current one which appeared in 2014, this one encouraged and edited by dhw. I appreciate your honest appraisal of yourself. I'm sure my opinions are not correct in other areas, but here I'm very convinced.

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An article on principles of physics that make hexagons common: - http://nautil.us/issue/35/boundaries/why-nature-prefers-hexagons - "According to William Kirby in 1852, bees are Heaven-instructed mathematicians. Charles Darwin wasn't so sure, and he conducted experiments to establish whether bees are able to build perfect honeycombs using nothing but evolved and inherited instincts, as his theory of evolution would imply. - "Why hexagons, though? It's a simple matter of geometry. If you want to pack together cells that are identical in shape and size so that they fill all of a flat plane, only three regular shapes (with all sides and angles identical) will work: equilateral triangles, squares, and hexagons. Of these, hexagonal cells require the least total length of wall, compared with triangles or squares of the same area. So it makes sense that bees would choose hexagons, since making wax costs them energy, and they will want to use up as little as possiblejust as builders might want to save on the cost of bricks. This was understood in the 18th century, and Darwin declared that the hexagonal honeycomb is absolutely perfect in economizing labor and wax. - *** - "If you blow a layer of bubbles on the surface of watera so-called bubble raftthe bubbles become hexagonal, or almost so. You'll never find a raft of square bubbles: If four bubble walls come together, they instantly rearrange into three-wall junctions with more or less equal angles of 120 degrees between them, like the center of the Mercedes-Benz symbol. - "Evidently there are no agents shaping these rafts as bees do with their combs. All that's guiding the pattern are the laws of physics. Those laws evidently have definite preferences, such as the bias toward three-way junctions of bubble walls. The same is true of more complicated foams. - *** - "Nature is even more concerned about economy than the bees are. Bubbles and soap films are made of water (with a skin of soap molecules) and surface tension pulls at the liquid surface to give it as small an area as possible. That's why raindrops are spherical (more or less) as they fall. - *** - "But those who think (as some do) that the honeycomb is just a solidified bubble raft of soft wax might have trouble explaining how the same hexagonal array of cells is found in the nests of paper wasps, who build not with wax but with chewed-up wads of fibrous wood and plant stem, from which they make a kind of paper. Not only can surface tension have little effect here, but it also seems clear that different types of wasp have different inherited instincts for their architectural designs, which can vary significantly from one species to another. - *** - "The rules of cell shapes in foams also control some of the patterns seen in living cells. Not only does a fly's compound eye show the same hexagonal packing of facets as a bubble raft, but the light-sensitive cells within each of the individual lenses are also clustered in groups of four that look just like soap bubbles. - *** - "The rules of cell shapes in foams also control some of the patterns seen in living cells. Not only does a fly's compound eye show the same hexagonal packing of facets as a bubble raft, but the light-sensitive cells within each of the individual lenses are also clustered in groups of four that look just like soap bubbles. In mutant flies with more than four of these cells per cluster, the arrangements are also more or less identical to those that bubbles would adopt." - Comment: The article goes on to describe diatomes and sponges with these patterns. The benzene ring in organic molecules is a hexagon. Another example of patterns at the basis for building life.

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It follows very specific patterns:

https://phys.org/news/2020-04-hidden-symmetry-chemical-kinetic-equations.html

"In each case, the researchers demonstrated that a simple mathematical ratio shows that the likelihood of errors is controlled by kinetics rather than thermodynamics.

"'It could be a protein folding into the correct versus the incorrect conformation, an enzyme incorporating the right versus the wrong amino acid into the polypeptide chain, or a motor protein mistakenly stepping backward instead of going forward," said Igoshin, a CTBP investigator and professor of bioengineering at Rice. "All of those properties can be expressed as a ratio of two steady-state fluxes, and we found that biological properties expressed in these terms are under kinetic control."

***

"Before it folds, a protein has energy, like a ball sitting atop a hill. Folding is the downhill run from this high-energy starting point to the place where the ball stops rolling. Chemists often use a visual aid called a "free-energy landscape" to chart energy levels in chemical reactions. The landscape looks like a mountain range with peaks and valleys, and the downhill run from a protein's unfolded starting point to its fully folded finishing point can look like a mountain road that winds through a series of valleys. Even if one town along the road is lower in elevation, a traveler might have to climb hills to get from one valley to the next on the way downhill.

"'We've shown it's the barriers, the high points between valleys, that determine these ratios," Igoshin said. "The depths of the valleys don't matter.

***

"Igoshin said the work stemmed from a 2017 study where he, Kolomeisky and former CTBP postdoctoral researcher Kinshuk Banerjee showed that the accuracy of enzymatic catalysis was kinetically controlled. Igoshin described the discovery as a "kind of underlying symmetry of equations."

"'If you look at the ratios of fluxes, you get this interesting cancellation, and all the terms that have to do with these values cancel out, and you get the invariance," he said.

"'When we first got this result, it seemed counterintuitive to us. Then, we were not sure if it was a coincidence, because in the previous paper we showed it for only two particular kinetic schemes. Now Joel's work has shown it can be generalized to this wide range of systems."

"Igoshin said the symmetry "wasn't that hard to prove, but no one noticed it before."

"'I think it is a very interesting physical result that has big implications in biology," he said. "It could help define the limits on what is possible in terms of controlling and optimizing system-level properties in many biological processes.'"

Comment: Basically God has seen to it proteins know how to fold to simplify the processes of life. Only properly folded proteins can have functions.

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DAVID: He is my God. I interpret him as I see fit.-I had drafted a full reply to your post, but on reading it through, I realize that we are simply going over the same ground again and again. It is of course right and proper that you interpret your God as you see fit, and in offering you alternative interpretations (a) of his intentions (if he exists), and (b) of the course that evolution has taken - with particular emphasis on an autonomous inventive mechanism, as opposed to random mutations sorted out by Natural Selection, divine preprogramming, and divine dabbling - I remain fully aware of the problems associated with ALL the different hypotheses. None of us know any of the answers, and that is why there is no consensus, but unless anyone else has a new angle from which to approach these two subjects (God's supposed intentions and what mechanisms have driven evolution from the single cell to the complexities epitomized by ourselves), perhaps it might be better to round this discussion off.

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DHW: I realize that we are simply going over the same ground again and again. It is of course right and proper that you interpret your God as you see fit,.... I remain fully aware of the problems associated with ALL the different hypotheses. None of us know any of the answers, and that is why there is no consensus, but unless anyone else has a new angle from which to approach these two subjects...... perhaps it might be better to round this discussion off.-I had arrived at the same conclusion prior to my last post. As you can see by the new posts I've added I am still looking the scientific outlets and trying to present new findings and new thoughts. My intent upon being invited to this website was to challenge the concepts of atheism and agnosticism as negative approaches to the issue of "why is there anything", Leibniz famous question. I maintain there must be something as a cause. You don't get something for nothing. So I intend to continue the battles from my foundational viewpoint, game on!-As a description by another person who shifted from non-belief to belief, in exactly the same manner as I did, look at the following:-http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/religion-and-intelligent-design-theory/-Although I am not sure, I think this William J. Murray is the son of the famous atheist, Madalyn O'Hare Murray. I was drawn to ID because of the points raised, and the open discussion I found there. They are trying for answers just as I am. I have come to believe in God in the form of a universal consciousness (shades of Einstein and Spinoza). I have taken the leap of faith, based on reaching a conclusion 'beyond a reasonable doubt'. We all know absolute proof is not achievable. - As a statement to everyone following this site: I know that atheists are totally negative in their approach, especially the vociferous ones like Coyne, Dawkins, Stenger, Myers, Dennett, etc. Agnostics claim to be trying to figure it out. And I think they can be honestly trying, but I sense there is an underlying negativity in their thought pattern. dhw is very honest in his description of his position, and I think he is just as stubborn as I am in coming to the battle. It really shouldn't b e viewed as a battle, but as an honest discussion to arrive at logical conclusions. I wish others would join in. Please do.

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Blood flow in vessels, if developing blockage, causes cells to respond by enlarging the vessel, or creating turbulence. This appears to be a built-in mechanism, not an IM invention:-http://medicalxpress.com/news/2014-12-cell-division-tissue.html-"'This is a strong result, that both the experimental results and simulations say that increased cell division may help tissue to grow and heal in a beneficial way and that this process is based exclusively on a physically-dependent diffusion, requiring no biological signalling. This may be important for healing around blood clots - and it is an example of nature's ingenious ability to take care of itself," explains Lene Oddershede."

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DAVID: As a description by another person who shifted from non-belief to belief, in exactly the same manner as I did, look at the following:-http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/religion-and-intelligent-design-theory/-Like you, Murray clearly doesn't follow any particular religion, but he seems to have different views from yours about guided evolution: 
My spiritual views do not require that evolution be guided, so I'm not in this argument to support any worldview a prioris [sic].
 
What has set me thinking, though, is his insistence that ID theory is scientific. This raises very interesting questions. One of the problems that bedevils the whole debate is the fact that all too frequently those involved fail to draw a distinction between science and the conclusions drawn by scientists. We need the distinction, because science is supposed to be objective and people can easily be misled into thinking that the philosophical beliefs of scientists themselves must therefore stem from objectivity (e.g. Dawkins' claim that natural selection explains the whole of life.) Scientists are no less subjective than the rest of us.
 
However, the borderlines are not always clear, as becomes all too obvious when we enter the realms of science theory - and this is Murray's focus. Tony quite rightly rails against people who refer to evolution as a fact (I recall being reprimanded for the same crime early on in the history of this website), and we are currently being bombarded by theories about multiverses, black holes, dark matter, dark energy, inflation, strings and superstrings in 11 dimensions, which all seem to raise more questions than they answer, and that's without even considering quantum theory. If they come under science, one might ask why ID shouldn't be in the same category. The argument that other theories deal with the natural world, whereas a designer suggests a supernatural world, falls apart if we acknowledge that none of us have a clue as to the borders of the natural world. If theories about unknown and probably unknowable universes, dimensions, forms of energy etc. can be dubbed scientific, why not a theory about an unknown and unknowable form of intelligent energy that produced our intelligence? Murray has a point. -DAVID: dhw is very honest in his description of his position, and I think he is just as stubborn as I am in coming to the battle. It really shouldn't be viewed as a battle, but as an honest discussion to arrive at logical conclusions. I wish others would join in. Please do. -We are coming up to the seventh anniversary of the launch of this website, and I would like to think that honest discussion has been the hallmark of all the exchanges between you and me, Tony, BBella, Matt and many others who have been and gone. I doubt if there is anyone who has actually changed their mind as a result of these discussions, but speaking for myself, I can only say that the exchanges have often been stimulating, illuminating, and usually with a tolerant courtesy that I find sadly lacking in some forums. Your presentation of new findings and thoughts is a wonderful source of information and is often a spur to further discussion. And yes, we are just as stubborn as each other. If we weren't, this website would have folded years ago!

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> dhw: What has set me thinking, though, is his insistence that ID theory is scientific. This raises very interesting questions. One of the problems that bedevils the whole debate is the fact that all too frequently those involved fail to draw a distinction between science and the conclusions drawn by scientists.-This is exactly why I say I look at the results and make my own conclusions.- 
> dhw: However, the borderlines are not always clear, as becomes all too obvious when we enter the realms of science theory - and this is Murray's focus. Tony quite rightly rails against people who refer to evolution as a fact...... The argument that other theories deal with the natural world, whereas a designer suggests a supernatural world, falls apart if we acknowledge that none of us have a clue as to the borders of the natural world. If theories about unknown and probably unknowable universes, dimensions, forms of energy etc. can be dubbed scientific, why not a theory about an unknown and unknowable form of intelligent energy that produced our intelligence? -I can't agree more. The quantum layer of reality seems supernatural at times.
 
> 
> dhw: We are coming up to the seventh anniversary of the launch of this website, and I would like to think that honest discussion has been the hallmark of all the exchanges..... Your presentation of new findings and thoughts is a wonderful source of information and is often a spur to further discussion.-Shall we have a party and bake a cake? I think our battle is presenting a service, perhaps stimulating, to those that watch and/or read. Friendly battles to the end!

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We are coming up to the seventh anniversary of the launch of this website, and I would like to think that honest discussion has been the hallmark of all the exchanges between you and me, Tony, BBella, Matt and many others who have been and gone. I doubt if there is anyone who has actually changed their mind as a result of these discussions, but speaking for myself, I can only say that the exchanges have often been stimulating, illuminating, and usually with a tolerant courtesy that I find sadly lacking in some forums. Your presentation of new findings and thoughts is a wonderful source of information and is often a spur to further discussion. And yes, we are just as stubborn as each other. If we weren't, this website would have folded years ago!-I for one am very thankful for the continuing information and discussion on this website. I rarely fail to read them daily. I often find a thought to add here and there but I am finding it hard to form a thought these days when it comes to the abstract. And in some sense...isn't this all about the abstract?

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> bbella: I for one am very thankful for the continuing information and discussion on this website. I rarely fail to read them daily. I often find a thought to add here and there but I am finding it hard to form a thought these days when it comes to the abstract. And in some sense...isn't this all about the abstract?-I'm delighted with your continuing interest. I'm still searching for meaning in why we are here. It is abstract and there never will be definite proof. But it is very significant that from an inorganic universe sentient folks have arrived who can decode the workings of their universe, using abstract advanced theoretical math. For me as science continues to show how complex living matter has to be to create conscious humans, that complexity is a very strong inference for God. The complexity defies a chance cause.

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> > bbella: I for one am very thankful for the continuing information and discussion on this website. I rarely fail to read them daily. I often find a thought to add here and there but I am finding it hard to form a thought these days when it comes to the abstract. And in some sense...isn't this all about the abstract?
> 
> I'm delighted with your continuing interest. I'm still searching for meaning in why we are here. -The question "why" always demands an answer. So I try very hard not to allow that question anywhere near my mind! ->It is abstract and there never will be definite proof. But it is very significant that from an inorganic universe sentient folks have arrived [.]-"Sentient folks" and inorganic material may have always been. Maybe we sentient folks "just arrived" here, in this part of the universe.->But it is very significant that from an inorganic universe sentient folks have arrived who can decode the workings of their universe, using abstract advanced theoretical math. -We are young in knowledge as a species. It takes a while for new life to catch up. I am talking along the lines of Rupert Sheldrakes Morphic Field or the Holographic Field. Lets say the answer to any of our questions are all "within us" (cells/DNA/etc) since all of our cells are witness to what is. It may just take time for the info to filter up into our conscious minds. Would we even recognize it if it did? So, we take baby steps.->For me as science continues to show how complex living matter has to be to create conscious humans, that complexity is a very strong inference for God. The complexity defies a chance cause.-I am thankful my mind doesn't work that way. It's like your mind is in two boxes; one inside the other. Science is the inner box and God is the outer box. It doesn't sound that much different than religion - to me. I understand what you are saying but I can't see how what you are saying can ever lead out of the boxes.-[edit: excuse my bluntness. Is why I try not to write on the fly!]

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> bbella: "Sentient folks" and inorganic material may have always been. Maybe we sentient folks "just arrived" here, in this part of the universe.-If I follow you, you think there is a multiverse and life originated a long time ago in one of those other universes than ours. This puts the origin of life elsewhere, but still doesn't provide an answer as to how it got started. It does establish us as a young species.
 
> 
> bbella: We are young in knowledge as a species. It takes a while for new life to catch up. I am talking along the lines of Rupert Sheldrakes Morphic Field or the Holographic Field. Lets say the answer to any of our questions are all "within us" (cells/DNA/etc) since all of our cells are witness to what is. It may just take time for the info to filter up into our conscious minds. Would we even recognize it if it did? So, we take baby steps.-I've read Sheldrake and am impressed with his theories that also include human consciousness, with important evidence to prove he is on the right track. I accept your implication of fields of information we have not yet recognized. Does this lead you to a theistic belief?-> 
> bbella: I am thankful my mind doesn't work that way. It's like your mind is in two boxes; one inside the other. Science is the inner box and God is the outer box. It doesn't sound that much different than religion - to me. I understand what you are saying but I can't see how what you are saying can ever lead out of the boxes.
> 
> [edit: excuse my bluntness. Is why I try not to write on the fly!]-You're not blunt, but very thoughtful. I know our modicum of knowledge boxes us in, but for some crazy reason I feel compelled to keep on searching, and contributing here. And I think the answers, as far as they will go, will never offer absolute proof. At the final step, God requires faith. Thanks for responding.

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> > bbella: "Sentient folks" and inorganic material may have always been. Maybe we sentient folks "just arrived" here, in this part of the universe.
> 
> If I follow you, you think there is a multiverse and life originated a long time ago in one of those other universes than ours. This puts the origin of life elsewhere, but still doesn't provide an answer as to how it got started. It does establish us as a young species.-I don't know about multiverses or about the idea of life originating. Maybe life has always been. But we seem like newer life in this area since we are very young and this area seems young "to us" as well - compared to much, much older life within eternity.-> 
> > 
> > bbella: We are young in knowledge as a species. It takes a while for new life to catch up. I am talking along the lines of Rupert Sheldrakes Morphic Field or the Holographic Field. Lets say the answer to any of our questions are all "within us" (cells/DNA/etc) since all of our cells are witness to what is. It may just take time for the info to filter up into our conscious minds. Would we even recognize it if it did? So, we take baby steps.
> 
> I've read Sheldrake and am impressed with his theories that also include human consciousness, with important evidence to prove he is on the right track. I accept your implication of fields of information we have not yet recognized. Does this lead you to a theistic belief?-The morphic and holographic fields fits for me the idea, metaphorically, that within a drop of ocean all the memory and information of all the ocean is contained. So a cell is like that drop of ocean, it contains the memory of all that is. That kind of thing. That's not really theistic.-> 
> > 
> > bbella: I am thankful my mind doesn't work that way. It's like your mind is in two boxes; one inside the other. Science is the inner box and God is the outer box. It doesn't sound that much different than religion - to me. I understand what you are saying but I can't see how what you are saying can ever lead out of the boxes.
> > 
> > [edit: excuse my bluntness. Is why I try not to write on the fly!]
> 
> You're not blunt, but very thoughtful. I know our modicum of knowledge boxes us in, but for some crazy reason I feel compelled to keep on searching, and contributing here. And I think the answers, as far as they will go, will never offer absolute proof. At the final step, God requires faith. Thanks for responding.-I'm also thankful for your searching and contributions here - and on this planet!

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> bbella: I don't know about multiverses or about the idea of life originating. Maybe life has always been. But we seem like newer life in this area since we are very young and this area seems young "to us" as well - compared to much, much older life within eternity.-Certainly in comparison to the age of the universe we are young. Whether there was prior life to us is something we do not know. All I think we can say is that life did start here about 3.6 billion years ago, how and why is totally unknown, and research so far hasn't given us any answer.
> 
>bbella: The morphic and holographic fields fits for me the idea, metaphorically, that within a drop of ocean all the memory and information of all the ocean is contained. So a cell is like that drop of ocean, it contains the memory of all that is. That kind of thing. That's not really theistic.-True. But perhaps all the information contained in the cellular genome is from God.-> bbella: I'm also thankful for your searching and contributions here - and on this planet!-Thanks you. It is the only planet I know.

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Here are five essential enzymes which are look-alikes, but each one functions for different purposes and they cannot be converted into each other. Note the complexity. Yet they suggest the origination followed a pattern:-http://www.biologicinstitute.org/post/105191942279/thinking-differently-about-biology-"The five enzymes shown above are clearly related in structure, especially the three on the left. Yet none of the others can replace BioF2's function in the cell, even when mutated and made in large amounts. Why is that? Probably because each enzyme is a structural whole, whose sequence is made to work together as a whole. Substituting or changing little bits doesn't work."-"Taking these two ideas together, it may be that our prior attempts to convert Kbl2 to perform the function of BioF2 failed not because we made the wrong alterations but rather because it is misguided even to think of this as an exercise in alteration. Perhaps we should think of this more in the way we think about writing. Sentences that convey different ideas may have similar structures, but when we write a sentence we start with the idea, not the sentence structure. We never take a sentence that conveys some other idea and ask which letters can be changed to make it better suited for our present purpose. The fact that different ideas end up being conveyed with sentences of similar structure, then, has nothing to do with recycling of sentences and everything to do with the suitability of certain forms for certain functions."

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A new entry following one here from 2014

https://cosmosmagazine.com/nature/animals/how-animals-grow-teeth-claws-and-other-pointy...

"Have you ever wondered how pointed shapes are made in nature, like animal teeth and horns? Australian scientists have found the process is governed by a simple mathematical pattern.

"The formula applies to shapes as diverse as vertebrate teeth, including giant sharks, tyrannosaurs, mammoths, sabre-tooth cats and humans, as well as claws, horns, antlers, beaks, fangs, and shells of other animals and dinosaurs. It could even help predict plant thorns and prickles.

"It’s based on a ‘power law’, according to Alistair Evans from Monash University, lead author of a new paper in the journal BMC Biology, which describes a straight-line relationship between the length of the structure and its width when taking the logarithm of both.

“This means we have a new rule of nature, working in parallel with other rules or ‘laws’ like logarithmic spiral growth,” he says.

“'The diversity of animals, and even plants, that follow this rule is staggering. We were quite shocked that we found it almost everywhere we looked across the kingdoms of life – in living animals and those extinct for millions of years.”

"'More than 350 years ago, mathematician Sir Christopher Wren – the designer of London’s St Paul’s Cathedral – suggested shells grow like a cone twisting around a logarithmic spiral. Evans and colleagues say they’ve now explained a missing piece of the puzzle. They call the new pattern a ‘power cascade’.

“'This describes how the shape of the tooth ‘cascades’ down the sides of the tooth following a power law,” Evans explains.

"The group took scans of various biological shapes using medical, microCT and 3D laser surface scanners. Using this process they measured hundreds of structures on the computer to first find the pattern and then test how broadly it applies.

"The formula has many possible applications, like predicting patterns of evolution or working out how old elephants are from their tusks.

“'The power cascade shape is very easy for animals and plants to generate as they grow,” says Evans, “so whenever a new structure is made, it will most likely grow according to the shape of the power cascade.'”

Comment: It seems patterns guide evolutionary developments. I said before God likes to use and follow patterns.

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We now understand that mitochondria and chloroplasts were engulfed from independent organisms to add function. Here is a review of that set of discoveries, and it makes a pattern of evolutionary development:-http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/41511/title/The-Cellular-Revolution/- "It was one of the first fundamental scientific problems to be addressed using molecular phylogenetics. The outcome marked a turning point in our understanding of cellular evolution.-"The genetic material within the mitochondria and chloroplasts of present-day organisms was, even with 1970s-style technologies, demonstrably bacterial, highly distinct from that residing in the cell nucleus. Within a decade the molecular evidence for endosymbiosis was unassailable. What remained, what still remains, is to iron out the details.-"Oxygenic photosynthesis evolved in the ancestors of aquatic cyanobacteria, entered the eukaryotic domain, and led to the very first chloroplast-bearing alga, paving the way for the colonization of land and the greening of planet Earth. A more recent and unexpected twist is the realization that cyanobacterium-derived chloroplasts have been passed from eukaryote to eukaryote: the ability to harness the sun's energy is a precious commodity. Many ecologically significant algaethink planktonic diatoms and red tide-forming dinoflagellatesare in fact the cellular equivalent of Russian nesting dolls: cells within cells within cells whose nested sets of genomes reveal who ate whom in the distant and not-so-distant past."

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Another study confirms this form of evolutionary spread of photosynthesis into different organisms:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/03/210330100330.htm

"Up until now, how cryptophytes acquired the proteins used to capture and funnel sunlight to be used by the cell had molecular biologists scratching their heads. They already knew that the protein was part of a sort of antenna that the organism used to convert sunlight into energy. They also knew that the cryptophyte had inherited some antenna components from its photosynthetic ancestors -- red algae, and before that cyanobacteria, one of the earliest lifeforms on earth that are responsible for stromatolites.

"But how the protein structures fit together in the cryptophyte's own, novel antenna structure remained a mystery -- until Prof. Curmi, PhD student Harry Rathbone and colleagues from University of Queensland and University of British Columbia pored over the electron microscope images of the antenna protein from a progenitor red algal organism made public by Chinese researchers in March 2020.

***

"'We provide a direct link between two very different antenna systems and open the door for discovering exactly how one system evolved into a different system -- where both appear to be very efficient in capturing light," he says.

"'Photosynthetic algae have many different antenna systems which have the property of being able to capture every available light photon and transferring it to a photosystem protein that converts the light energy to chemical energy."

***

"As study lead author, PhD student Harry Rathbone explains, when a single-celled organism swallows another, it can enter a relationship of endosymbiosis, where one organism lives inside the other and the two become inseparable.

"'Often with algae, they'll go and find some lunch -- another alga -- and they'll decide not to digest it. They'll keep it to do its bidding, essentially," Mr Rathbone says. "And those new organisms can be swallowed by other organisms in the same way, sort of like a matryoshka doll."

"In fact, this is likely what happened when about one and a half billion years ago, a cyanobacterium was swallowed by another single-celled organism. The cyanobacteria already had a sophisticated antenna of proteins that trapped every photon of light. But instead of digesting the cyanobacterium, the host organism effectively stripped it for parts -- retaining the antenna protein structure that the new organism -- the red algae -- used for energy.

***

"'In going from cyanobacteria that are photosynthetic, to everything else on the planet that is photosynthetic, some ancient ancestor gobbled up a cyanobacteria which then became the cell's chloroplast that converts sunlight into chemical energy.

"'And the deal between the organisms is sort of like, I'll keep you safe as long as you do photosynthesis and give me energy."

***

"'Paul's novel approach was to search for ancestral proteins on the basis of shape rather than similarity in amino acid sequence," she says.

"'By searching the 3D structures of two red algal multi-protein complexes for segments of protein that folded in the same way as the cryptophyte protein, he was able to find the missing puzzle piece.'"

Comment: It was important for the evolutionary process to develop wide spread photosynthesis to free up enough oxygen to reach 21% of our atmosphere. And thanks to Lynn Margolis for recognizing the way to add a function by ingulfing another organism

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