Chimps \'r\' not us: the role of gene enhancers (Introduction)

by David Turell , Wednesday, January 31, 2018, 16:09 (2283 days ago) @ dhw
edited by David Turell, Wednesday, January 31, 2018, 16:22

DAVID: But we can find no reason for multicellularity based on a need for survival, and as you point out multicellularity created problems for survival, so why bother? My answer is God wanted complexity to achieve His goals and had to introduce it.

dhw" I am in no position to explain multicellularity (I wrote “for whatever reason”), but if God exists, I am quite prepared to acknowledge that he wanted complexity to achieve his goals. And since multicellularity produced an ever changing bush of life, it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that his goal was to create an ever changing bush of life. Not just one particular species, but lots and lots of species.

I repeat: Our appearance cannot be seen as a necessary event, when compared to similar organisms (apes) who survived just as well as we did over the past few million years. You keep ignoring our specialness as a clue to God's purpose.

dhw: In most cases I agree that these new ways would have led to greater complexity, but as I keep saying, complexity for no purpose makes less sense to me than complexity for a purpose (improved chances of survival, or improved living conditions).
DAVID: Makes no sense in view of my comment above.

dhw: You said he needed complexity to achieve his goals. Why does it make no sense to suggest that his goals were improved chances of survival/improved living conditions?

99% of all earlier more complex species are dead. His obvious main goal is/was humans.

dhw: Again no need for God’s “guidance” (a term we need to jettison, since you made it clear under “autonomy v automaticity” that you really mean preprogramming or dabbling) if he gave cells/cell communities the intelligence to work out their own ways of surviving and improving.

DAVID: Of course God guided the process. Why did sapiens 'as a species that carried improvement far beyond the bounds of survival' as you state, but then gloss over it by describing their further development beyond survivability. Doesn't it occur to you that you have it all backward and survivability was of no issue to the Homo branch?

dhw: Do you honestly believe that the Homo branch was not and is not concerned with survival? Tell that to the Rohingya and the millions of homos who have died and are still dying from disease, starvation, war, natural disasters, so-called ethnic cleansing. Tell it to yourself, a retired doctor whose whole career was based on saving people’s lives or improving their physical condition? There is no “glossing over”. Most of our so-called civilisation has grown out of improving our chances of survival and improving our living conditions. Survivability is ALWAYS the first priority. But the same intelligence that has led to all the advances in both fields has also led us to thoughts beyond those of survival and improvement – e.g. to questioning the purpose of it all, or to enhancing the richness of our lives through the arts.

You have dragged in current events, which are horrible, but they do not change the point that
prior to 30,000 years ago we lived in caves in survival mode despite our huge but unused brain that stayed at survival mode. We had to learn to use it. Of course stone age folks individually wanted to survive. I'm not discussing the issue at that level.