Genome complexity: what genes do and don't do (Introduction)

by dhw, Friday, February 15, 2019, 13:35 (1869 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: How can you avoid the origin of life in our discussions. We can assume that the genome at the very beginning had all or many of the characteristics that we debate when we debate how it all works.

dhw: I have not ignored the origin of life! Over and over again I have emphasized that the mechanisms for life and evolution may have been created by your God. The dispute, then, is confined to what your God put in those first cells: you insist that it was a library with all the information and instructions necessary for evolution (other than those he dabbled), including the slug’s defensive glue, the pre-baleen whale’s toothlessness, and the weaverbird’s nest, whereas I suggest it was the intelligence to process both old and new information and then to create new instructions.

DAVID: We cannot really dispute what is in the first cells. We only have suppositions. I'm still awaiting Behe's book on deletions which would support my points.

Since we cannot dispute it, we should at least remain open-minded, as you appear to be when you accept my “possibilities”, but as you refuse to be when you reject them.

Dhw (re "bacterial resistance"): Maybe the mechanism is not “spontaneous”, and maybe resistance/non-resistance depends on what you would call each bacterium’s “own operating system” for interpreting information and acting on it, i.e. “single cells change their metabolic pathways"… and “learn” and “create instructions on the hoof”, as proposed in the article you initially agreed with.
[…]
DAVID: If one percent are already resistant , there are no new instructions.

dhw: There is no way of telling whether the one per cent are already resistant (having presumably been given special instructions 3.8 billion years ago) or have worked out a way of resisting.

DAVID: Are you disputing science finds one percent are already resistant before the antibiotic is given?

Are you disputing science when it finds that cells learn, create instructions on the hoof, create instructions de novo? You have complete faith in scientists who appear to confirm your conclusions, but if they disagree with you they are hyperbolic fakers.

Under “new axons may make local decisions”:

DAVID: I view it as the growing ends of the axon branches respond to local stimuli and either grow toward or away automatically according to instructions it carries.

dhw: […] Self-control, decision-making, autonomy, semi-autonomy, semi-independent are not synonymous with “automatic”. Thank you again for providing scientific evidence that contradicts your view of automaticity – or do you now wish to claim that these scientists too are fakers only interested in getting grants?

DAVID: They are not fakers. I view the final steps in reaching a connection are automatic molecular reactions. This earlier steps are as you describe.

The “earlier steps” are the processing of information, the taking of decisions, and the issuing of instructions. Then of course the final steps are automatic – otherwise the decisions and instructions would not be implemented! Thank you for at last accepting the possibility that the earlier steps are not automatic but are the product of cellular self-control and autonomous decision-making.


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